questions on my nec 3500a and DMA

[af9148]

i just got my nec 3500a from newegg and installed it into my dell. the dell came with a cd burner that was set to Master so i installed my nec as slave. then i made sure the drive was set to DMA if avaliable in device manager. then used nero to burn my first dvd with a iso image and noticed the Used Read Buffer and Buffer level kept on fluctuating and in the end it took me about 37 minutes just to burn a DVD+R at 6x(had the option of choosing speeds from 4x-8x and did 6x just to test it). after it finished burning i went to check again if DMA was enabled turned out both Nero's infotool configuration tab listed Master as DMA On and Slave as DMA Off and went to Advanced Settings for the Secondary IDE Properties and got this:

Device 0:
Device Type - Auto Detection
Transfer Mode - DMA if available
Current Transfer Mode - Ultra DMA Mode 2

Device 1:
same as Device 0 for Device Type and Transfer Mode but for
Current Transfer Mode - PIO Mode

for some reason Device 1 is always on PIO Mode, so now i have my NEC as a Master and my cd burner as a slave and copied a cd on my cd burner and the same thing happened where both buffer levels would increase and decrease constantly.

any one have any ideas why my secondary IDE is always on PIO mode or suggestions as to how i can fix this?

btw i burned the same DVD Image again with it set as Master and it burnt in 9:51 just wondering if that is normal time when burnt at 8x. and i noticed that the Total Time always goes over the Remaining time for example:

Total Time could be at 8:34
Remaining is at 0:00

does that happen to you guys to?

currently the firmware is 2.16 should i have flashed it to 2.18 before burning? btw when i burnt my first dvd and it was set as slave and on PIO mode with both buffer levels fluctuating can that damage the drive?

[chas0039]

Windows reverts to PIO after attempts to use DMA fail. I am not sure why this is happening to you. You might try different burning software or you might try a different set up of drives on different IDE cables. I had a Dell that drove me crazy with all the weird problems it had with different optical drives. It just would not play well with more than one. Win 2000 as I recall. XP solved the problems.

http://www.onthegosoft.com/dma_setting_nt.htm

[budz]

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7625
above link is how to set to DMA IN XP

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=6645
above link is PROBLEMS IN ENABLING DMA MODE IN XP

[sync]

I also have a Dell and was unable to use DMA mode until I installed the Intel Application Accelerator.
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/index.htm

[budz]

beware that IAA can cause software conflicts with some burner software.

[troy1684]

Thnx for the help guys. I have a dell 8100 and was having the same problem after installing the NEC 3500A drive. I would see sporadic activity in the buffers when burning. Also, it was so slow. I knew it had something to do with DMA, but couldnt find where to set it. I looked in bios, hardware device manager. Basically I looked everywhere, but I missed the IDE advanced setting tab

After I set it to DMA and reboot, it now burns like a charm. Btw, I'm still using win2k pro

Oh, one thing I almost forgot to mentioned is to check your ide cable. I noticed there were two in my dell box. The primary cable looked different than the one in the secondary. The primary cable had more thin wires running thru it. I replaced the thicker cable in the secondary with similar another similar to the one already in the primary. I installed another optical drive in the secondary and also set it to DMA.

[nic2k4]

I had the same problem, where DMA was set in device manager, but the drive was behaving like it wasn't. Turned out the drive needed to be detected in the BIOS too. Just get into the BIOS; I think for Dell you push F10 right after you turn it on, it should say on the screen which key to push. Then, go to the drive listing, move the cursor down to the secondary slave position and push enter.

[Skith]

Also, be aware that the NEC 3500A uses Z-CLV write strategies for some speed/media combinations. This means that writes are performed in "zones" of a set speed. See Nec 3500A review at cdrinfo.com. You may notice the dips in the line (on the above linked page), particularly where the speed zones change. At these locations the buffer will empty, then refill. This is perfectly normal behavior for a drive using Z-CLV write strategies.

here is a link to a similar thread over at http://club.cdfreaks.com .