[LONG] Followup [ILUG] 2x[Q] Samsung DVD+/-R(W), and cleaning PC internals

[Brian Foster]

  | Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 08:39:29 +0200
  | From: Brian Foster <blf at blf.utvinternet.ie>
  |[ ... ]
  |  1st, I want to replace my (possibly dying) internal DVD
  |       player with an (internal) DVD recorder or rewriter.
  |       [ ... ] do people suggest using DVD-R(W) or DVD+R(W)?
  | 
  |  2nd, [ any suggestions on removing dust inside the PC? ]

 this is a follow-up, in reverse order.
 it is also very long!  (with perhaps low info content?)

 the dust wasn't a problem.  there was very little _inside_
 the case (which was easily removed with a brush); most of
 it was near air vents either on the outside of the case
 (with a large colony of the stuff on the bottom and the
 floor), or trapped in-between the metal chassis and outer
 plastic housing (easily removed with a vacuum cleaner).

 I went for the Samsung 16x “Super-WriteMaster” (soon to be
 replaced by an 18x version), which (after the above post)
 I discovered was probably a rebadged Toshiba.  confirmed,
 it is a Toshiba SH-S162.  other than an annoyance caused
 by the physical design of my PC — I had to remove the PSU
 to get sufficient room to (un-)plug the cables — removal
 of the old and installation of the new was not a problem.
 I was mildly surprised the new unit is actually shorter
 than the old one, and annoyed that there's no labelling
 of (e.g.) the jumpers on the new (there is on the old,
 (re?-) badged Pioneer); I had to decipher the very terse
 instruction sheet (and double-checked by comparison to
 the old unit).

 unfortunately, those terse instructions gave no clew
 as to the BIOS/DMA/PIO settings &tc, nor the exact
 specifications.  all that is on the accompanying CD.
 which is extremely silly:  you need a working drive to
 access data/instructions to make the drive work.  ;-(
 fortunately, nothing was amiss, the BIOS detected the
 drive with plausible looking parameters.

 the 1st hint of a problem was when my SUSE 9.1 system
 called the unit a 48x.  eh?  (I was mildly surprised at
 this point:  I was just about to run YaST2 to check on
 the configuration, when a window popped up saying the
 hardware had changed and did I want to run YaST2.)

 the 2nd hint of a problem was when YaST2 only asked me
 to install the new unit, but didn't list or otherwise
 indicate anything about the old unit.  that is, I was
 expecting (and later manually did) to also remove data
 about the old unit.

 my first attempt to read a CD (the unit's own) worked,
 but it did not automount.  CDs in the old unit did.
 I had to manually mount the CD.  (despite hating the
 `subfs' SUSE 9.1 uses — when it goes wrong — I admit
 I have found it useful enough to leave it enabled.)

 a check of the specs found on the CD found the 48x is
 Ok: the advertised 16x applies to certain DVDs whilst
 the 48x applies to certain CDs.

 I decided to try a reboot to see if that would clear
 up the automounting problem:  the theory was YaST2
 had setup /etc/fstab after (I'm guessing here) it
 was used to configure the automounting, and so the
 automounting only "knew" about the old unit (which
 was still in /etc/fstab) but not the new.  (this
 turned out to he correct.)   also, I wanted to check
 I could still boot from DVD, so I rebooted into the
 Knoppix 4.0 on the (Dec-2005?) Linux Format cover DVD.

 booted fine, no problems with Knoppix, automounting
 worked after booting back into SUSE, but now I could
 not auto-UN-mount (i.e., eject)!  worked around by
 unmounting `subfs' as the new unit's device type, so
 ATM I have to mount/unmount manually.  also, since
 I suspect the problem is the duplicate entries in
 /etc/fstab, manually removed them, but have not (yet)
 rebooted to see if that fixes anything.

 at this point I decided to try burning a DVD.  no dice.
 not knowing what sort of media to buy, I had bought a
 box of DVD+R DL.  my first attempt at a burn (using
 SUSE's modified cdrecord(1)) failed because the drive
 does not support TAO.  lacking the necessary size info
 on the image (which I don't normally collect when I
 run mksiofs(1) because TAO doesn't need it), I tried
 a packet-mode burn.  but, as the man page says, "this
 is experimental!".  yep, it sure is!  `cdrecord' was
 convinced I was still trying a TAO burn.  ;-(

 change brick walls:  tried the `k3b' GUI.  ah, a
 clew!  `k3b' was convinced the blank was a DVD-R
 and insisted on having a DVD+R.  which is what the
 blank was, almost: it's a DVD+R DL,  hum.... after
 thinking about this a bit, decided DLs are probably
 newer than the old-ish 9.1 software, and so `k3b'
 (v0.11.12) is probably both confused and incapable.

 change brick walls, again:  stuck in a blank CD-R,
 and burnt it with `k3b', no problem.  while, not
 quite:  I don't normally use `k3b'.  it is a neat
 way of building an image, but is a significant pain
 in the arse if you like to do a simulated (`-dummy')
 burn before the real one.  it can do it, but it
 goes out of its way to make it difficult.

 3rd hint of a problem:  the burn had to use burnfree
 multiple times, which the other drive (a CD rewriter,
 there are two optical drives on my PC) never(?) has.
 dunno if this is due to the smaller buffer on the new
 unit (2Mb) vs. the other (4Mb), fscked DMA settings,
 `k3b', operator fscked-up, or presumably not using
 pseudo-realtime scheduling (which I normally do when
 using `cdrecord').  in any case, the resultant CD
 reads back fine in the new unit, but I haven't tried
 it yet in (any) other unit.

 and that's where it stands.

  - I can read CDs, and burn CD-Rs, which are then
    readable in the same drive;  to check: reading
    burnt CDs in another drive.

  - burning DL DVDs is probably out (at least until
    the system/something is upgraded?).

  - it may be possible to burn a DVD+R.  I need to
    get some DVD+R _and_ DVD-R blanks to see; and
    I will worry about CD-RW and DVD+/-RW later.

  - `dvdrecord' only handles DVD-R(W?)?

  - SUSE 9.1 does not seem to include any useful
    doc on the (included) "dvd+rw-tools"?  ;-(

  - to check: playing a DVD movie, and reading
    a DL DVD (but not sure I have any DLs ATM?).

  - also to check:  reboot, and see if I can
    eject an automounted CD and/or DVD.

 thanks, everyone, for the helpful suggetions.
 (and sorry for the long post!)
cheers,
	-blf-
-- 
Experienced (20+ yrs) kernel/software Eng: | Brian Foster   Montpellier,
 • Unix, embedded, &tc;  • Linux;  • doc;  | blf at utvinternet.ie   FRANCE
 • IDL, automated testing, process, &tc.   |  Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
Résumé (CV) http://www.blf.utvinternet.ie  |     http://www.stopesso.com