CDRW problem that has me befuddled

vsp · 07-11-2003, 06:10 PM

Since I got my computer two summers ago, I've been using an LG 12x8x32 burner with it. (Other major specs -- Athlon 1300, A7V133 motherboard, 256MB RAM, 60GB HD (WD60 0BB-32CCB0), Win98 SE.)

I had problems obtaining the full 12x speed out of that burner -- Nero generally ran into buffer problems at faster than 8x, CDRWin got twitchy above 4x, and only DiscJuggler seemed happy at 12x. That model didn't have buffer underrun (having an 8MB RAM buffer instead), so I chalked it up to a quirk of the software and moved on.

I decided to replace it with a faster model, and settled on an LG GCE-8520B (52x24x52) from eBay. I received it today, hooked everything up, and everything seemed fine -- Windows recognized it right away, it read discs properly, Nero liked it once I applied the most recent Nero upgrade, and I threw in a disc to test the speed.

Much to my chagrin, it's actually SLOWER on my system than the 12x burner! The buffer underrun protection kicks in constantly, with the buffer jumping back and forth between ~20% and ~50-60%. I tried a simple data burn at 48x and an audio burn at 32x, using different brands of CDRs, and _both_ came out at around eleven minutes for a full disc.

The HELL?

Obviously, there's a serious bottleneck somewhere on my system, but I'm at a loss as to where to begin looking.

Bitman · 07-11-2003, 06:26 PM

I just call it "BURP." Oh, and um, check all your DMA settings. (Hasn't this been discussed here before?) For comparison, my P3-800 can do the full 52x, so something's obviously fungled.

vsp · 07-11-2003, 08:28 PM

CDRW settings:

HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8520B

Target ID: 0 Logical unit number: 0 Firmware: 1.00

Disconnect: checked
Sync data transfer: blank
Auto insert notification: checked (usually I turn that off, though)
DMA: blank

Driver: none required or provided, Plug & Pray found it properly.

Other settings and whatnot on request.

SteveDallas · 07-11-2003, 11:10 PM

Do you know what the buffer on it is? It's possible (though unlikely) that it actually has a smaller buffer than your older one.

vsp · 07-12-2003, 12:08 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by SteveDallas
Do you know what the buffer on it is? It's possible (though unlikely) that it actually has a smaller buffer than your older one.

My old burner (CED-8120B) had an 8MB buffer, but no buffer underrun protection whatsoever. The GCE-8520B has a 2MB buffer with SuperLink buffer underrun prevention. From everything I've read, either one of those _should_ be sufficient on a system that's this fast. The fact that I've had can't-reach-full-speed problems with two different CDRW drives points to something other than the drives themselves.

Slow hard drive, perhaps? Screwed-up drivers in Windows? (I am considering a reinstall of Win98 SE for other reasons, as soon as I get the energy together to reinstall all my apps as well. Perhaps that might help.)

SteveDallas · 07-12-2003, 08:38 AM

Hmmmm only other thing I can think of (other than weird hardware meltdown is, are the hard drive and CD burner on the same IDE controller? If so, you might get better results from sefilesparating them.

It's still weird. I have a 233MHz Pentium MMX and I can burn data or WAV audio tracks at 16x with no trouble. (MP3s usually need 8x to burn to audio CDs because they take more processing to decompress.)

juju · 07-12-2003, 10:46 AM

"DMA: blank"? Doesn't that mean DMA isn't turned on?

vsp · 07-12-2003, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by juju
"DMA: blank"? Doesn't that mean DMA isn't turned on?

It isn't, and can't be turned on. If I select the DMA checkbox for the CDRW drive, I get a popup box that says:

"UNSUPPORTED HARDWARE ALERT
Changing this setting may have undesirable effects with your hardware. Contact your hardware vendor to ensure that this setting is supported. Hit OK to continue."

If I click OK (leaving the box checked) and reboot, it's unchecked when Windows restarts.

My hard drive does not have a DMA check box in Device Manager. (Disconnect and Sync Data Transfer are checked.)

Tobiasly · 07-12-2003, 01:05 PM

I'm not sure about Win9x, but under 2K/XP the DMA is set under the properties of the IDE channel that the drive is connected to, not the drive itself. Is there a category like "IDE controllers" under your Device Manager?

vsp · 07-12-2003, 04:58 PM

My IDE controllers are listed under "Hard Disk Controllers."

I see:

* Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) (settings dependent on VIA controller)
* Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) (settings dependent on VIA controller)
* VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller (only modifiable setting: "Dual IDE Channel Settings," set to Default).

No go there.

One other quirk, which probably means nothing: the CDRW is openly listed under "Secondary Master" in the BIOS, but there is no Primary Master listed (it's set to "Auto," rather than explicitly to the HDD.) I'm not fucking around in the BIOS unless I know exactly what I'm doing and why, however.

Tobiasly · 07-13-2003, 07:05 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by vsp
One other quirk, which probably means nothing: the CDRW is openly listed under "Secondary Master" in the BIOS, but there is no Primary Master listed (it's set to "Auto," rather than explicitly to the HDD.)

You're right, it means nothing... gone are the days when you had to explicitly set a hard drive's properties in the BIOS (whether you did it manually, or let it automatically detect once after it was installed). These days it pretty much just auto-detects everything at startup. Makes it easier for consumers to change their hard drive, whether that's a good or bad thing!

The important thing, as Steve mentioned, is that the hard drive is one one channel and the CD-RW on the other. Whether a device is master or slave, when it is the only device on a channel, makes no difference.

Bitman · 07-14-2003, 08:23 PM

Yah, setting all your IDE to auto is OK, the BIOS will figger everything out on boot. However, if you can nail down the settings (for example, disable the slaves if nothing's connected there) then the machine will boot a little faster.

Quote:

Originally posted by vsp
"UNSUPPORTED HARDWARE ALERT
Changing this setting may have undesirable effects with your hardware. Contact your hardware vendor to ensure that this setting is supported. Hit OK to continue."

If I click OK (leaving the box checked) and reboot, it's unchecked when Windows restarts.

Something is b0rked here, Windows shouldn't complain like that. Looks like the driver screen is lying to you; you need drivers. Get the latest chipset drivers from your motherboard manufacturer. You shouldn't need a new BIOS, just the Windows drivers.

Also visit the CD manufacturer's site to see if they have any drivers or installation notes. But do the driver thing, and see if anything improves.

Quote:

My hard drive does not have a DMA check box in Device Manager.

Also b0rked; there's no way to know if the HD is at full speed or not.

vsp · 07-15-2003, 07:50 PM

I picked up a couple of drive-bay brackets tonight so that I could install both CDRWs at once, and futzed around with the cabling... and the results were pretty good.

The problem seems to be that my motherboard's IDE interfaces were laid out like this:

Primary UltraATA100-IDE Primary IDE
================ ================
================ ================
Secondary UltraATA100-IDE Secondary IDE

which I'll call (A B
..................C D) for short.

When I looked around, the hard drive was plugged into A, the 52x drive was plugged into D (which is where the 12x was plugged in before)... and nothing was in B or C.

How I have it now is the hard drive in A (set as primary master), the 12x drive in D (set as secondary master) and the 52x drive in C (set as secondary slave). With the 52x drive plugged into the UltraATA-100 port, the results are MUCH different -- I burned a ~680MB CD at 48x in 4:25 and at 32x in 4:30. (I'm not sure if the media I am using is rated for > 32x, so I'll try another brand, but 4 minutes is a damn sight better than 11 minutes.)

Both the read buffer and the recorder buffer level were jumping around like mad during the burning, but buffer underrun protection was on, so the end product was fine.

Suggestions as to more optimal cable configurations are welcome. My IDE cable isn't long enough to plug both CDRW drives into the UltraATA port in their current case configuration (at the top of the minitower), so I figured that the slower drive would be fine at the old IDE setting (letting me burn at 4x when needed) and the faster drive could use the better connection.

So when I get another hard drive, how do I work that into the above mix?

07-16-2003, 05:16 AM

Well, that's definitely better... but I seem to recall burning a full CD at 48x in about 2:35. Not to say that I'd nitpick over two minutes, but still. Is that right? What's the burn speed at 48x? I seem to recall it being 7.2 megs/second, which would make it 432 megs per minute, or 1080 megs in 2.5 minutes. It was a 700meg CD duplication, but that included time to write the TOC and all that stuff. I guess that sounds about right.

Regardless of whether it's 4 minutes or 2 minutes, fast CD-RW drives sure are nice.

07-16-2003, 05:21 AM

Also, my setup keeps hard drives off the IDE channel at all, so both the DVD drive and the CD-RW drive (Lite-On 52x) are on the primary IDE channel. I would keep optical drives (anything reading an optical disc - i.e., a CD-RW drive) on a separate channel from all hard drives. Way back in the old days, that used to slow us down quite a bit. And the slower IDE channel should be sufficient for your CD-R burning needs for quite some time (up until like, say, 150x at the very least).

For those that can't afford SCSI to keep hard drives and CD drives <b>totally</b> separate, I recommend Serial ATA. Drive prices are actually relatively decent (though more expensive than regular IDE, that's for sure), but they're super-duper fast (the hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in your system) and will be apart from your optical drives. Mmmm, technology.

07-11-2003, 06:10 PM	#1
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	CDRW problem that has me befuddled Since I got my computer two summers ago, I've been using an LG 12x8x32 burner with it. (Other major specs -- Athlon 1300, A7V133 motherboard, 256MB RAM, 60GB HD (WD60 0BB-32CCB0), Win98 SE.) I had problems obtaining the full 12x speed out of that burner -- Nero generally ran into buffer problems at faster than 8x, CDRWin got twitchy above 4x, and only DiscJuggler seemed happy at 12x. That model didn't have buffer underrun (having an 8MB RAM buffer instead), so I chalked it up to a quirk of the software and moved on. I decided to replace it with a faster model, and settled on an LG GCE-8520B (52x24x52) from eBay. I received it today, hooked everything up, and everything seemed fine -- Windows recognized it right away, it read discs properly, Nero liked it once I applied the most recent Nero upgrade, and I threw in a disc to test the speed. Much to my chagrin, it's actually SLOWER on my system than the 12x burner! The buffer underrun protection kicks in constantly, with the buffer jumping back and forth between ~20% and ~50-60%. I tried a simple data burn at 48x and an audio burn at 32x, using different brands of CDRs, and _both_ came out at around eleven minutes for a full disc. The HELL? Obviously, there's a serious bottleneck somewhere on my system, but I'm at a loss as to where to begin looking.

07-12-2003, 04:58 PM	#10
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	My IDE controllers are listed under "Hard Disk Controllers." I see: * Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) (settings dependent on VIA controller) * Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) (settings dependent on VIA controller) * VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller (only modifiable setting: "Dual IDE Channel Settings," set to Default). No go there. One other quirk, which probably means nothing: the CDRW is openly listed under "Secondary Master" in the BIOS, but there is no Primary Master listed (it's set to "Auto," rather than explicitly to the HDD.) I'm not fucking around in the BIOS unless I know exactly what I'm doing and why, however. Last edited by vsp; 07-12-2003 at 05:32 PM.

07-15-2003, 07:50 PM	#13
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	Well, that's a bit better... I picked up a couple of drive-bay brackets tonight so that I could install both CDRWs at once, and futzed around with the cabling... and the results were pretty good. The problem seems to be that my motherboard's IDE interfaces were laid out like this: Primary UltraATA100-IDE Primary IDE ================ ================ ================ ================ Secondary UltraATA100-IDE Secondary IDE which I'll call (A B ..................C D) for short. When I looked around, the hard drive was plugged into A, the 52x drive was plugged into D (which is where the 12x was plugged in before)... and nothing was in B or C. How I have it now is the hard drive in A (set as primary master), the 12x drive in D (set as secondary master) and the 52x drive in C (set as secondary slave). With the 52x drive plugged into the UltraATA-100 port, the results are MUCH different -- I burned a ~680MB CD at 48x in 4:25 and at 32x in 4:30. (I'm not sure if the media I am using is rated for > 32x, so I'll try another brand, but 4 minutes is a damn sight better than 11 minutes.) Both the read buffer and the recorder buffer level were jumping around like mad during the burning, but buffer underrun protection was on, so the end product was fine. Suggestions as to more optimal cable configurations are welcome. My IDE cable isn't long enough to plug both CDRW drives into the UltraATA port in their current case configuration (at the top of the minitower), so I figured that the slower drive would be fine at the old IDE setting (letting me burn at 4x when needed) and the faster drive could use the better connection. So when I get another hard drive, how do I work that into the above mix? Last edited by vsp; 07-15-2003 at 08:06 PM.

07-11-2003, 06:26 PM	#2
Bitman cellar smellar Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: californy, baby! Posts: 403	I just call it "BURP." Oh, and um, check all your DMA settings. (Hasn't this been discussed here before?) For comparison, my P3-800 can do the full 52x, so something's obviously fungled.

07-11-2003, 08:28 PM	#3
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	CDRW settings: HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8520B Target ID: 0 Logical unit number: 0 Firmware: 1.00 Disconnect: checked Sync data transfer: blank Auto insert notification: checked (usually I turn that off, though) DMA: blank Driver: none required or provided, Plug & Pray found it properly. Other settings and whatnot on request.

07-11-2003, 11:10 PM	#4
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	Do you know what the buffer on it is? It's possible (though unlikely) that it actually has a smaller buffer than your older one.

07-12-2003, 08:38 AM	#6
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	Hmmmm only other thing I can think of (other than weird hardware meltdown is, are the hard drive and CD burner on the same IDE controller? If so, you might get better results from sefilesparating them. It's still weird. I have a 233MHz Pentium MMX and I can burn data or WAV audio tracks at 16x with no trouble. (MP3s usually need 8x to burn to audio CDs because they take more processing to decompress.)

07-12-2003, 10:46 AM	#7
juju no one of consequence Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Arkansas Posts: 2,839	"DMA: blank"? Doesn't that mean DMA isn't turned on?

07-12-2003, 01:05 PM	#9
Tobiasly hot Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Jeffersonville, IN (near Louisville) Posts: 892	I'm not sure about Win9x, but under 2K/XP the DMA is set under the properties of the IDE channel that the drive is connected to, not the drive itself. Is there a category like "IDE controllers" under your Device Manager?

07-16-2003, 05:16 AM	#14
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Well, that's definitely better... but I seem to recall burning a full CD at 48x in about 2:35. Not to say that I'd nitpick over two minutes, but still. Is that right? What's the burn speed at 48x? I seem to recall it being 7.2 megs/second, which would make it 432 megs per minute, or 1080 megs in 2.5 minutes. It was a 700meg CD duplication, but that included time to write the TOC and all that stuff. I guess that sounds about right. Regardless of whether it's 4 minutes or 2 minutes, fast CD-RW drives sure are nice.

07-16-2003, 05:21 AM	#15
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Also, my setup keeps hard drives off the IDE channel at all, so both the DVD drive and the CD-RW drive (Lite-On 52x) are on the primary IDE channel. I would keep optical drives (anything reading an optical disc - i.e., a CD-RW drive) on a separate channel from all hard drives. Way back in the old days, that used to slow us down quite a bit. And the slower IDE channel should be sufficient for your CD-R burning needs for quite some time (up until like, say, 150x at the very least). For those that can't afford SCSI to keep hard drives and CD drives <b>totally</b> separate, I recommend Serial ATA. Drive prices are actually relatively decent (though more expensive than regular IDE, that's for sure), but they're super-duper fast (the hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in your system) and will be apart from your optical drives. Mmmm, technology.

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