[rescue] cdrom woes again...

Sun Jun 8 09:31:55 CDT 2003

Not really sure what to say except... are you sure the burned CDs are
good....  IMHO as cd burning speeds have gone up, and media costs have
gone down... CDR and CDRW quality has dropped.

Stick with Tayo-Yuden and Mitsui based media (all Tayo-Yuden made discs
(no matter what brand name there is on them) have a frosted center hub).

If they really are good... I'm not sure why you are having a problem.

One thing... make sure vold is disabled during a cd-record... you don't
want it probing the writer while it is busy working.

Best of luck,

  -- Curt

>From: "Ryan Thoryk" <ryan at tliquest.net>
>To: rescue at sunhelp.org
>Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 00:16:09 -0500
>X-OriginatingIP: 192.168.0.6 (ryan)
>Subject: [rescue] cdrom woes again...
>
>This is pertaining to a series of messages I posted a while ago about SCSI
>cdrom problems on Sun machines.
>
>I've currently narrowed the problem down to around as far as I can go, and
>here's a quick summary:
>
>I've got an Sun Ultra 2 that I recently replaced it's old cdrom with a much
>newer Yamaha 8x8x24 cdrw drive (model CRW8824S). It used to have a Toshiba
>XM-5401B that was pulled from an old huge Dell Poweredge server (a monsterous
>dual pentium 100 box).  I've been trying to get both of these drives to work
>normally on this Sun machine and an older one (a sparc5/170), but with
>problems.  It's getting frustrating especially that the new drive is a cdrw,
>and it's screwing up some cds from this problem. I originally thought the old
>drive was bad, but thought wrong.
>
>The problem is basically a series of read errors and hardware errors that
>occur when only reading and writing CDR discs (and cdrw discs).  Both of my
>Solaris 8 and 9 install cds have to be booted around 2 to 3 times before the
>install starts actually working.  Both of my netbsd cds (sparc32 and sparc64)
>have problems, but at least are more reliable.  A typical incident would be
>when I insert a cd, and then the drive would click around a lot, as if the cds
>bad, even though it's fine.  At random times read errors would pop up, and
>sometimes cds that are burning would either fail before or after the data copy
>(during the first init, or the fixation).
>
>Here's what I've checked:
>cd types affected: only cdr or cdrw media (cds work flawlessly on other 
machines)
>-both drives checked on both machines, with same results (both drives are
>50-pin scsi)
>-ultra2 has latest prom update
>-multiple scsi cables tested
>-multiple termination settings tested
>-hard drives placed onto the scsi buses, work fine
>-block size jumper on yamaha drive tested at both settings
>-a 512-byte block CD created, still has problems
>-vold not issue
>-cdrecord complains a lot (also latest scg driver installed, for sol9)
>-parity jumpers tested
>-cd size (650 vs 700mb) not an issue
>
>This is the weirdest thing...
>any suggestions?
>
>Ryan Thoryk
>Unix and Network Specialist
>ryan at tliquest.net
>_______________________________________________
>rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

Curtis Wilbar
Hawk Mountain Networks
rescue at hawkmountain.net

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