Linux Desktop Summit Re: [SGVLUG] Hello from San Diego

[Michael Proctor-Smith]

On 4/26/06, Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> Dustin Laurence wrote:
>
> >>surprised -- my current problems are with: an nVidia video card (closed
> >>source)
> >>and problems with inexpensive IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drives).
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Everybody is having optical drive problems.  I guess it isn't just
> >Matti. :-)
> >
> >
> Most of the time, they work fine, but with cdparanoia, I
> get a really weird result -- the drive progressively gets
> worse "jitter" (according to cdparanoia) until cdparanoia
> just "train wrecks" on a particular track, and the drive
> becomes unusable.
>
> But if you then reboot the computer (I think even a soft
> boot will do it), then it's back to normal, and the process
> starts over again. I can usually get through about 3 CDs
> before needing a reboot (but some CDs make it crash
> faster).  The weird thing is that it is progressive -- once
> it screws up, no CD will work until the reboot.
>
> The failure mode is weird too -- cdparanoia records silence
> for the rest of the broken track, and for the other tracks (but
> the track lengths are correct).   I guess it knows how long
> the track is supposed to be, but it doesn't actually get the
> data (OTOH, neither does it realize the drive has failed).
>
> My research so far suggests this may be a manifestation
> of bad hdparms and/or accessing the drive as /dev/hdd instead
> of using ide-scsi emulation and accessing it on the SCSI chain
> (it's an IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM).  But I still haven't figured out
> how to fix that.  Might even be a problem with using Linux 2.6
> (which I am).
>
> It's only a problem for ripping CDs, it seems to handle data
> disks just fine.


This actually sounds like a drive/firmware problem. The fact that it
only happens while ripping cds makes me think firmware is the problem.
Device manufactures are content providers (example sony), or have
caved to them and made drives unreliable for ripping cd or dvds.

Yes the firmware can tell that you are reading data, or audio/video
files and act differently. I have not heard of this particular problem
but I know for a fact that a lot of new dvd firmware will limit dvd
ripping 2x instead of the advertised 16x.

Also alot of cd you buy these days are not actually red book cds and
technecally can not be called cd. They work in when playing in
standalone cd players and in computer when playing as regular cd but
cause failures when rip the cd, it is actually a different read mode.

> I also have a DVD drive that writes DVD no one else can read.
> Pretty irritating, since I was trying to use it to move data from
> one computer to a standalone system.  Not sure what that's
> all about.

Did you make sure the disk is fixated. Also some older drives do not
like reading burned disk of any kind, or may not like dvd-r or dvd+r
media.

> Cheers,
> Terry
>
> --
> Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
> Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
>
>
>