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

[Declan Moriarty]

Have skimmed this.

1. Don't give up on dvd writing until you try at a very low speed, i.e.
2x or 4x.

2. cdrecord gives very good info when asked to (man cdrecord) and will
tell you things like dao, tao, etc. it needs /dev/sg0 - read the docs.
The guy likes to pretend IDE is actually SCSI. For dvds try growisofs
(+r) or dvdrtools (-r). I would actually be surprised if a modern drive
does not do TAO.

3. dvd-r and dvd+r are both available from Lidl (€3.99 for 5). The dvd+r
works for me at 8x. They also have dvd+rw

4. A modern dvd-r only drive is possible but unlikely, especially from
the Japanese.


	Declan Moriarty

On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 12:56 +0200, Brian Foster wrote:
>   | 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