On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 13:40:31 Trent W. Buck wrote:

My knee-jerk reaction is:

WTF why are you using all those long-dead buses? A brand-new SATA burner is $20. It's faster and cheaper to try that before debugging an old PATA or SCSI burner.

Except if your motherboard has PCI-X and SCSI it probably predates ubiquitous SATA, so you'd have to replace the motherboard and probably CPU as well, and now I just want to go cry in a corner.

I have a stack of DVD drives that I don't immediately need. If anyone needs drives I could bring 2 of the type you prefer (IDE or SATA) to the next LUV meeting, then you can return the one that's least suitable for your purposes. NB if anyone takes me up on this please make a note of what (if anything) was wrong with the drive you returned. Most systems I run don't need to write to CDs and DVDs so any drive that's read-only can be used for that purpose. Also if anyone with such problems wants to bring their PC to the Beginners' SIG I could supply the parts and people there could fix it for you. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 17:14:49 Rohan McLeod wrote:

Russell that is very generous of you; I might try Trent's suggestion of coupling a R/W SATA burner to a SATA HD.

There is no connection between the burner and the HDD. In the unlikely event that you have a motherboard which supports it then you can run an IDE disk and a SATA DVD-RW drive without necessarily having any problems. The common case of a SATA disk and IDE DVD-RW drive (the default configuration for desktop PCs shipped ~3-5 years ago) also won't necessarily have any problems. CD/DVD writers are difficult, some just don't work for no particular reason. For my own use I don't bother too much about it, I always have 3+ PCs capable of doing such things and if one doesn't successfully burn CDs then I just transfer the ISO image to another.

These drives are definitely working or just possibly working ?

The drives all came from PCs that were known to work well. As I don't always test DVD drives before adding them to my pile it is possible that a PC had a damaged DVD drive and no-one noticed because CDs and DVDs aren't used much nowadays, but that isn't likely. It's also possible that a working DVD drive became non-functional after being on the shelf for a while (tested and known working drives have failed that way for me before). But if I give you 2 drives then you are pretty much guaranteed that one will work. If you want IDE then I can give you 3 to be even more confident of success.

Main problem would be the logistics as I have a permanent clash with the monthly LUV meeting; and the Beginners SIG is week-ends I seem to recall ?; when I'm often working ! Perhaps I should just try ComputerBank as they are just around the corner ?

It's up to you. Of course you could get a friend to attend a LUV meeting to collect drives for you. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 23:02:32 Rohan McLeod wrote:

...

There is no connection between the burner and the HDD. In the unlikely event that you have a motherboard which supports it then you can run an IDE disk and a SATA DVD-RW drive without necessarily having any problems.

thanks Russell I shall accept that as authoritative ie mixing SATA and IDE has no intrinsic problems ?

If you have an IDE HDD and an IDE DVD-RW on the same cable then there is potential for interference as there always is when one cable has multiple devices. Other than that, kernel bugs (which while possible aren't likely in this regard), and motherboard hardware bugs there shouldn't be any issue.

...

The common case

of a SATA disk and IDE DVD-RW drive (the default configuration for desktop PCs shipped ~3-5 years ago) also won't necessarily have any problems.

CD/DVD writers are difficult, some just don't work for no particular reason. Now that could be relevant to my problem ie Box I CD/DVD had a problem; Box II CD/DVD had no problem ?

Yes.

...

For my own use I don't bother too much about it, I always have 3+ PCs capable of doing such things and if one doesn't successfully burn CDs then I just transfer the ISO image to another.

Which raises the issue is burning an ISO image an identical problem to burning a selection of mp3 sound files; to what will become an audio CD ?

If a drive won't allow burning an ISO then I would bet money that it won't burn an audio CD. It is possible that some drives will work with ISO files but not audio because ISO files are the most common use case. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

Trent W. Buck wrote:

Rohan McLeod wrote:

...

Which raises the issue is burning an ISO image an identical problem to burning a selection of mp3 sound files; to what will become an audio CD ? You can't (at least, you couldn't) just do

cdrecord *.mp3

to generate a CDDA disc. (CDDA is what works in your hifi; ISO and HFS are what work in a computer). But you *could* do it with PCM files, which usually have a .wav extension.

I didn't want to distract discussion, but the OS is actually XP and the application BurnAware Free; which seems to do precisely what 'was' not possible with cdrecord; (BurnAware Free presumably converts on the fly). The issue I was speculating above, was the conversion buffer overflows due to some hiatus with writing; where as writing an ISO file might not have the same problem ?

Last time I actually cared about such things, there were new things called "mp3 discs" or something, that your new car stereo could play.

My van is very cold on winter nights ! Trent thanks for your thoughts ; regards Rohan McLeod

Trent W. Buck wrote:

Rohan McLeod wrote:

...

The problem was to burn a compilation audio-CD; so it could be played on the audio-CD player on my mini-hifi system

There are two "boxes" identical OS and application; application on box I aborts burn twice; seemingly complaining about discontinuous audio stream; application on box II completes without problem.

Box I: 2.8Ghz dual core CPU 2GB RAM ; IDE CD/DVD burner SATA HD Box II : old Intel server-board 2.4GHz dual core x 2 Xeon CPU's and 2GB of RAM; CD/DVD burner is IDE with adaptor card so that HD and CD burner; are both on the SCSI bus connected to Adaptec 39320 LVD SCSI controller; in PCI-X slot. My knee-jerk reaction is:

WTF why are you using all those long-dead buses? Trent thanks for response Hmm......when I ask myself questions like that; I often suspect the answers are merely rationalising the status-quo ! ..... a miserly, sentimental old fool ? A brand-new SATA burner is $20. It's faster and cheaper to try that before debugging an old PATA or SCSI burner.

So SATA burner and drive....... no particular reason apart from time and money ?

Except if your motherboard has PCI-X and SCSI it probably predates ubiquitous SATA, so you'd have to replace the motherboard and probably CPU as well, and now I just want to go cry in a corner.

Whilst we deeply appreciate your empathy and sympathy; perhaps you should resist the trip to the corner till; still more sorrows have accrued ? :- | many thanks Rohan McLeod