Sony DWU14A DVD writer - flashed to DR510
The drive seems to write ok but movie playback is poor - jumpy, blocky, sound breaking up etc etc. - even with ORIGINAL DVD's
One thing I have discovered is that if I set the IDE controller for that device to PIO mode only, movie playback is better, but uses 100%CPU, so might prove unreliable for ripping, even if the slightest call is made by another windows process for CPU time.
If I set the IDE controller back to "use DMA if available" - windows xp sets the IDE channel to use UDMA 2 - the CPU usage when playing back discs is now lower, but the poor playback occurs, as described above.
Any ideas? I don't really want to to leave to drive on PIO as it does obviously support UDMA.
Help Please!
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Are you using decent cables this can be a problem when using DMA Mode which requires good quality cables , if the mode is working correctly you should experience nice smooth playback . There are a number of other possibilities as well but this is a good place to start .
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THanks for the reply.
I am using new round IDE cables - 80 conductor cables. I tried putting my old flat 80 core cable back in and the problem persists - so not cable related I think.
Any other ideas? -
That's a very fast system you have to for DVD Playback it should be very smooth , I do like ASUS Motherboards I must say , are you using the Motherboards own drivers for the chipset and IDE Controller rather than Microsofts Proprietry ones , with some chipsets I have found these to be a problem .
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If your motherboard uses a VIA chipset (I think it does but the Asus website isn't too helpful on older boards), have you got the Chipset drivers loaded? This is often cause of problems with DMA. You don't need 80 way ribbons on CD and DVD drives as they are only capable of DMA mode 2 which is UDMA33. 80 way cables are only needed for UDMA100 and higher.
How is the drive connected? Although others might disagree, I've always found that things work best if hard drives are on the primary IDE channel and CD/DVD drives on the secondary with writers as the Master. -
Thanks for the replies - keep em coming!
The Asus board is an ALI chipset.
Until last night I was using Microsoft's own ALI bus mastering IDE driver, but I have installed the Asus one with no effect.
I agree re: 80 core cables, but am I correct in thinking that an 80 core on a DMA2 drive will not have an adverse effect?
The set up I have is this:
Pri Master - main HDD (DMA 5)
Pri Slave - Secondary HDD (DMA 4)
Sec Master - Sony DVDRW (DMA 2 - or PIO at the moment!!!!)
Sec Slave - 52 x cd writer
I really wanted the primary hard drive and the DVD-RW on seperate IDE channels, as obviously the main data transfer will then be across channels.
I have temporarily removed the CD writer and put in my old DVD ROM drive - so the secondary channel now as has the DVD-RW as the master and the DVD-ROM as the slave. With the DMA settings for the DVD ROM drive set to DMA if available, it seems to be using something called DMA Multi Word. No idea what this is, but anyway, DVD playback from this drive is very smooth with low CPU usage.
So the problem still lies with the DVDRW in DMA mode. I take it this drive can be used in DMA mode!!??
Any more ideas peoples!?
Thanks in advance -
It should be possible to use the writer in DMA Mode I have a Pioneer DVR106D and it runs fine in Ultra DMA Mode 2 along with my DVD-ROM also running in Ultra DMA 2 , Multi Word DMA is a older transfer mode that's a little slower than Ultra DMA bu still allows the Drive to access the system with much lower CPU load (DMA of course meaning Direct Memory Access) . I have found though with writer regretably there reading parameters are not as good as a standard DVD-ROM drive indeed playback is better with the ROM than the Writer . I can see however the difficulty you obviously want to keep your CD Writer . What DMA Mode does your CD Writer operate in is it Ultra DMA or Multi Word DMA .
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The cd writer is in UDMA mode 2.
I am not overly fussed about keeping the cd writer - i could easily get a combo DVD reader / CDRW drive - this would take care of faster CD burning, and also faster DVD ripping. The way things stand at the moment, I cannot rip using the DVD-RW drive, and the DVD-ROM drive only rips at 2x which is painful! Isn't it funny - having just re-read what I have typed - we should all be happy we can "backup" our cd's and DVD's at all - and here is me moaning I need to be able to write CD's at 52x etc!
Anyway, sorry, off topic.
There must be a reason why this drive doesn't like working in UDMA2 mode. Does it really make a difference which IDE channel it is on? Am starting to wonder whether to purchase a PCI EIDE controller card to enable me to run DVD-RW on it's own.
Really don't want to give up on this - have been looking forward to getting my Sony, and now I'm disappointed!! -
Yes it seems a very annoying problem , I can only surmise that the two optical drives have some problem with each other , additional controllers are not however hugely expensive and it does allow you to at least operate all the various drives you have plus you get the freedom of 4 channels . I can only suggest at this time is to use the DVD-Writer as Master set to UDMA 2 and use the Multi word 2 drive as the slave , this may to some extent help your problem , truly it is lucky to be able to do it all , but it really makes a difference if it doesn't take so long to do it . The slow ripping speed seems typical of DVD Writers .
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Ah... but I have ALWAYS had the DVD rewriter as the master drive on the secondary channel.
I hear what you are saynig about the two optical drives having a problem with each other - but I must be very unlucky if that is the case, as the problem exists whether I have the DVD ROM as the slave drive or the CD writer as the slave - but either way, the DVD-RW is always the master.
I could try it with NO slave I suppose.....
I'm no begging (yet) but any more thoughts? Thank you for all your help so far... -
In the past I've had problems mounting two different make of HDD's on the same IDE buss. And no matter what I did they just would not work properly but as soon as I changed to using HDD drives of the same make all the problems disappeared. It doesn't happen so much these days but there is still the odd occurence.
Now if it will happen with HDD's I see no reason to not expect it to happen with CD and DVD drives. So it could be a clash between the interfaces on the two drives.
Just a thought based on experience.Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. -
I had thought of that - but to be honest, I have tried the DVDrw with 2 different drives as the slave but same problem. Given the infrequency with which drives on the same IDE channel clash, I would have to be very unlucky!
Still, it is worth a shot, and I will try the DVDRW on it's own as a master - nothing else on the IDE channel. That way I will know for sure![/quote]
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