Hello,

A year or so ago, I installed Mandrake 9.2 on a Dell PC and it broke the CD ROM reader. A couple of weeks after my attempt to install Mandrake, it was posted on the Mandrake site that it does that on LG CDROM readers. I could never fix the CD and I had to replace it. Then I installed Mandrake 9.2 successfully with the new CDROM and was happy with it.

Tonight, I decided to install Mandrake 10.0. Well shit, it just broke another CDROM reader. This time the defunc is a NEC.

I have installed Redhat and Fedora for years and it had never broken my hardware. What's wrong with Mandrake? Why does it always have to break something in my PC?

Anyone got similar problem with a NEC CDROM? The first symptom I noticed is that my PC could no longer boot from the CDROM. I booted with another OS to realize that the CDROM is no longer working (scrap, kaput).

Thanks
Jean

I recall reading about this issue. I seam to recall that the manufacturer had some bad coding on the drive. I think they were replacing those under warranty. I seam to recall reading that people were getting replacements anyway.

If it were something specific to Mandrake I would think it would burn all CD drives since they are supposed to be made to the same standards.

You may want to contact the manufacturer and see what they say. A google search may help too. You may find where someone else had the problem with NEC drives or not. Could be a coincadence, (sp?), as well. I happen to have a LG drive and used it to install Mandrake, several times on different machines. Just happens that mine had the proper coding. Lucky for once.

Does suck though. I'd be pissed too.

Later

I also read about this a while ago. I wasn't aware that this affected more than one manufacturer. The last I heard it was a manufacturer problem (as dalek said).

I too am aware of the firmware issue on certain LG drives. It affected Mandrake 9.2 only. Also it was confirmed that Mandrake had adhered to the standards and it was LG that wandered from the standard. The first thing I do after work every day, after takin the furry woman out for a squirt, is scan my favourite three Mandrake forums. I read every thread, every day, without fail in an attempt to learn. I have not come across anybody else claiming to have had Mandrake 10.0 kill a cdrom. I think sometimes bad timing and coincidence prevail and we jump to conclusions.
About six years ago I thought there was a conspiracy at Microsoft to kill my cdroms. With Windows 98 my first year back into computers with a celron 300, first PC since my Vic 20, I went through something like six cdroms in the first year. The computer shop at that time claimed it was due to my ex and myself smoking at the pc and the pc drawing the smoke through it and wrecking the read heads. And you know, ..............they are in business to make money, so they are not about to admit that M$ is sending cdrom selfdestruct commands over the internet! They just kept selling me cdroms. Anyway, switched to Linux and haven't replaced a cdrom since.
The only hardware I've ever damaged with Linux was blowing up a 14 inch monitor booting Knoppix. That was my own ignorance as, for older 14 inch monitors there is a documented paramater to pass at boot time to reduce refresh rate to make it compatible with an older 14 inch monitor.

Thanks for the warning on 14 inch monitors. I use knoppix extensivly sometimes. That must have been quite a blast! (bad pun intended)

You know, in all the years I've been using computers, I've never seen a drive die from reading a CD. It still gives me a chuckle everytime i hear about such things.

You'd think QC would catch these kind of things.

The only problem I've ever had with a CD rom, was it would rerad a CD to boot from, and after it booted from it, it would hang at any installer, Windows XP or Linux.

ok, so can someone explain to me how a CDR can screw up a bit of hardware?

This has been documented in a few places, but here's a quick run-down, from MandrakeLinux :

"A problem with LG CD-ROM drives was discovered that the kernel shipped with Mandrakelinux 9.2 triggered. This problem was that the kernel would send a FLUSH_CACHE command to the LG CD-ROM drive which would make the drive inoperable by overwriting its firmware. This is because some LG CD-ROM drives are not compliant with the ATAPI specification. The specification does not require an implementation of the FLUSH_CACHE command in the driver, and returning an error (or doing nothing) would have been the correct behaviour for the drive. Likewise, reusing a command is against the specification and LG has reused the FLUSH_CACHE command to modify the firmware of the drive, but they are unwilling to disclose exactly what the command does. This FLUSH_CACHE command is supposed to be supported only by CD-RW or DVD-RW devices; the LG-based CD-ROM devices are understanding this command as the UPLOAD_FIRMWARE command."

Thanks. That makes more sense than something I heard - that the CDR physicaly damaged the lense.