As taken from Vader's post(s) over at the dvdwriters forum (and one reply confirming similar), there seems to be some method to the madness;

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(Vader) Posted: June 15 2002,19:45


I've had nothing but grief with this all day. Every time I tried to start writing a disc, I got a communucation error in Nero, yet it happily erased and formated them. I could read files, and wrote a quick test disc in ULead DVD MovieFactory Demo, which also worked fine, so in theory the cabling is fine.

After loads of searching online, I found the following:

1. The drive seems power hungry
2. Nero 5.5.8.2 is said not to work as its a buggy as ####, 5.5.8.0 is recomended
3. The lead-out is said to take ages (upto 15 minutes in some cases)
4. The firmware 1.20 is reported to be buggy

Well the power theory sounded reasonable, so I yanked out some stuff. Still same error.

I looked for Nero 5.5.8.0 but couldn't find it, but then remembered I tried an earlier version yesterday before upgrading to see if it fixed the problem (think it was 5.5.7.8 or something), so that couldn't be the problem.

I was failing before the track data was written, so it couldn't be a lead out problem.

AFAIK 1.20 is the only firmware for the 104, so if it was THAT buggy, I'm sure it wouldn't have been launched, and/or a fixed firmware would be out by now.

So I was still no better off. Then it occoured to me. Communication Error sounded like a cable problem dispite the other things working. The drive is only UDMA33, and I was running it on a 66/100 cable, but in addition, it was a rounded cable, which are known to be iffy on data transfer due to the shieling being insufficient. I changed the cable for a flat 33 cable (rather than a flat 66/100 as I have nothing on the secondary anyway so it made no difference to me), and booted up.

After trying Nero again, I'm pleased to say it wrote 1.5GB with no problems what so ever (and the lead-out only took a minute or two). I've wiped the DVD-RW (incidently, before the ETA for erasing/formating was 5 minutes or so, and it never reached the end properly, the progress bar kept going up and down. With the 33 cable on its coming up as 1:30 and finishes at the end of the progress bar) to try a second time before writing to DVD-R, and its at 38% so far, so seems to be working ok. Before it wouldn't even get passed the Lead-In, so I'm fairly confident that this particular problem is fixed.


In summary, sorry to waffle, but there might be a few things in there to consider, especially the cable, depending on your actual problem. I know how frustrating its been to get it to write a #### disc, so better too much information than not enough.

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(Vader) Posted: June 16 2002,14:41



OK, done yet more testing and research. Seems as though there can be problems when running the drive in UDMA mode, with AMD/VIA chipsets.

I knocked my drive down to PIO Only, and tried the DVD-RW again. Like yesterday, it wrote fine, and was readable in the DVD-ROM. So I tried a DVD-R, and I'm pleased to say, it wrote sucessfully and was also readable, unlike yesterday.

I still don't know if my problems are solved, or if its just a fluke, but I shall continue with the settings as they are now, and see how it goes.

Just thought I'd let you know as it might be something you can try.

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(Dirkbox) Posted: June 18 2002,10:42



I made 5 coasters at the weekend using my DVR-104 and an Abit KT7A board. Turned off UDMA and all was fine.

Bit annoying having a UDMA drive that won't work in UDMA on my board.

Also read something about not having anything else on the same IDE channel.