# sucky burner??

## line72

I have an ide tdk velocd 24x10x40 burner, and i have had the worst luck with it.  It sucks !!! i can't seem to burn anything.  I have a 1.2 athlon with 512 megs ram and i can only burn at < 8x or i'll get a buffer underun.  Any body know why.  Did i miss something in compiling my kernel.  Gentoo automatically enables dma for my hard drive and stuff so i assume my burner get dma enabled too.  Any ideas??

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## lx

Can you burn on 8+ using 'm Window$, (media used can also cause errors) well I have a similar system using plextor 12x and never had problem with buffer, so there's definitly something wrong with your setup. But what, I can't tell.

```
Alex root # cat /proc/ide/hdc/settings

name         value      min      max      mode

----         -----      ---      ---      ----

bios_cyl                0               0               1023            rw

bios_head               0               0               255             rw

bios_sect               0               0               63              rw

current_speed           34              0               70              rw

ide_scsi                0               0               1               rw

init_speed              12              0               70              rw

io_32bit                1               0               3               rw

keepsettings            0               0               1               rw

log                     0               0               1               rw

nice1                   1               0               1               rw

number                  2               0               3               rw

pio_mode                write-only      0               255             w

slow                    0               0               1               rw

transform               1               0               3               rw

unmaskirq               1               0               1               rw

using_dma               1               0               1               rw
```

Sorry can't help, lX.

Harddisk and Cdrom are on different IDE-ports?

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## line72

I don't have windows so I've never tried.  I had my one hd on my primary master, my burner on secondary master, and dvdrom on secondary slave

```

name                    value           min             max             mode

----                    -----           ---             ---             ----

bios_cyl                0               0               1023            rw

bios_head               0               0               255             rw

bios_sect               0               0               63              rw

current_speed           34              0               70              rw

ide_scsi                0               0               1               rw

init_speed              12              0               70              rw

io_32bit                1               0               3               rw

keepsettings            0               0               1               rw

log                     0               0               1               rw

nice1                   1               0               1               rw

number                  2               0               3               rw

pio_mode                write-only      0               255             w

slow                    0               0               1               rw

transform               1               0               3               rw

unmaskirq               1               0               1               rw

using_dma               1               0               1               rw

```

i have 24x media so its not a media problem, anyone ?

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## lx

Can you measure hd and cdrom read performance. HD is hdparm -tT /dev/hda1. Cdrom well just cp a file and you surely can tell the difference between 8x and 32x/40x or whatever. When does the buffer-underrun occur (to state the obvious use similated run). And does the buffer keep up and then suddenly ain't filled anymore?

Cya lX.

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## line72

ok here's the result from my hard drive /dev/hda:

```

dillavou app-cdr # hdparm -tT /dev/hda 

/dev/hda:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.81 seconds =157.82 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  2.28 seconds = 28.10 MB/sec

```

why is my hard drive so slow ??

and from my dvd drive (hdd):

```

dillavou app-cdr # hdparm -tT /dev/hdd

/dev/hdd:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.81 seconds =158.39 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 39.23 seconds =  1.63 MB/sec

```

I didn't know how to do my burner so i deleted hdc=scsi from my menu.lst and rebooted and here's what i get:

```

dillavou dev # hdparm -tT /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.90 seconds =142.62 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in 24.80 seconds =  2.58 MB/sec

```

now what ?

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## line72

i just put this burner in my girlfriend mandrake box and it works great, i'm using mandrake's config for my kernel, so i should have the same kernel as her.  Is it a problem with my hardware, did i screw something up when building my computer ?

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## delta407

I have this exact burner, and it's excellent under Gentoo. I can cook CDs at 24x with under 4% load on one of my 1.0 GHz P3s. Check your configuration.

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## line72

any chance you could post the .config file you used to build your kernel (maybe i'm missing something)

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## TheWart

you are not by any chance trying to record from the dvd are you?  if you are, you will get all kinds of errors because both the burner and the dvd drive are on the same ide channel

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## delta407

 *line72 wrote:*   

> any chance you could post the .config file you used to build your kernel (maybe i'm missing something)

 

http://www.visi.com/~rwglynn/kernel-config

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## line72

no i'm not try to burn from my dvd, just files of my hard drive

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## madpenguin8

Why not try a dmesg, and see if the kernel is spitting out an error about not having the right ide driver compiled in. I made this mistake and had very poor performance when transfering files. I rebuilt my kernel right and now enjoy great performance improvements. This is usually the problem with windows machines also, improper ide drivers cause many buffer under-runs.

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