Amiga DVD-rom problem
 

I received an Amiga DVD-rom drive today from a firm called vesalia which is in germany. I've connected it up to the ide interface of my miggy 1200, the harddrive works but I can't get the dvd-rom drive to work. It doesn't show up on the workbench and it won't eject either. But I've had to change the plug on the lead of the dvd-rom drive to a 3 pin plug. It had a 2 pin plug attached to it with 250v on it. The voltage here is 240v. So I'm just wondering if its the cable why the dvd-rom drive isn't working it does power on. I have got kickstart 3.1 roms in the a1200 to use the dvd-rom drive. Could I have connected it to the ide interface wrong, I suspect it may be the power. I've emailed the company about this but I'd more expert advice from the forum.

Wow..

Ok,

- The drive's probably an external drive? The 240v vs 250v is moot..
- If it's not connected to the computer and you turn it on, does the tray open and close then?
- How do you connect it to the IDE bus? Do you have a long ribbon cable coming out from between your machine's case, going inside the DVD drive's case or what?
- Can you supply us with pictures (front and back) of the DVD drive?
- Is the DVD jumpered as slave? Is the HDD as master?
- Can you provide a link to the item on Vesalia's webstore, perhaps that might also help to identify what kind of drive it is..

Ok, that's my hardware questions.. Next up, software..

- What cd filesystem are you using?
- Does your dosdriver have the correct unit number and device name?
- Is the dosdriver started? (is the device mounted)

Heres the link

http://www.vesalia.de/?V02b0f15545f4...f5a50440257575

The dosdrive is mounted because cd0: is in the dosdrivers directory. Could you explain about the jumpers master and slave because this may be the problem. Also the dvd drive doesn't open up when not connected to the miggy. I thought you may have to have it connected up to do this. It is an external device connected with an ide interface the ide interface also controlls the hard drive. I got rubbish instructions how to install it and got no instruction on how to get it working software wise. Could it be the power supply which is at fault? The power supply supplied it says 50W PSU which is similar to the power supply lead that goes into the pc, it has 3 pins at the back. Written on the lead is 250v this is why I think the dvd-rom drive isn't getting enough power. Either that or its knackered.

Hmm, you might want to divide your texts into chunks, it's quite difficult to read that one block..

But ok..

- The dosdriver is mounted, but does it have the correct unit number?
- Where exactly (full path) do you have the CD0 dosdriver?
- Are you using an IDE splitter, or is the DVD-ROM and the HDD on the same cable?
- What kind of connector is there on the back of the drive for IDE? A normal connector just like behind an internal 3.5" IDE hard drive?

About master and slave: You can only have one of each on a single IDE bus. In basic you should have the master on the end of the cable, but the Amiga's IDE is so slow that you can have them any way you like. Just make sure, that you don't have both devices on the same setting!

Like I said before, I'm certain that the drive's power supply will work just fine with 240V.. The wall voltage varies between 220V and 250V in Europe, so this power supply just handles a maximum of 250V coming in. Oh, did you mean that the power cable itself says 250V printed along the length of it? If so, then that just means that the cable can handle a maximum of 250V without melting, nothing to do with the actual power supply of the drive enclosure.

The drive itself eats +12V and +5V DC. The PSU can certainly transform and regulate +12VDC and +5VDC out of 240VAC..

50W is more than enough power for one 5.25" optical drive. You could probably run three or more off that PSU.. They're not very power hungry.

The drive should open and close normally if there's only the power cable connected (data cable totally disconnected)

What you should check:

1) hdd as master, dvd as slave if they're on the same cable
2) if you have the dvd as slave on a single cable setup, then the unit number in the dosdriver / it's tooltypes should be 1
3) where is the dosdriver? If it's in SYS:Storage/Dosdrivers, then it doesn't get mounted before you either double click it, or say mount cd0: in a shell.

Thanks for the advice. I tried everything you said and found out how I can change the dvd-rom device to slave. Still no luck. The dvd-rom drive still won't eject either so I've decided to send it back, the faults are probably connected.

While looking in the device to change it to slave I noticed something interesting. Someones designed it to work on an amiga but it uses a pc dvd-rom drive. So after I receive my new drive if it ever goes faulty I can replace the dvd-rom drive easily. Lets just hope that the next dvd-rom drive works!

Yes, it's a standard IDE DVD-ROM in an external case.. There are actually no "PC" driver per se, the IDE interface is also used in many Macs, Sun machines, etc..

Hope you have better luck with your next drive..

PS. "external ide" doesn't really exist - the standard doesn't support external devices.. Thus you'll always have a ribbon cable snaking from inside your machine when you use devices like this. :-/

This is true, you can take out a DVD+RW drive from a domestic DVD recorder sold in supermarkets etc and plumb it straight into your PC or anything else.

Also for anyone else, if you connect up a drive to any machine, amiga or otherwise, and it doesn't eject OR the seek light doesn't flash busy at least once then the drive is faulty full stop. These are low level electronics the drive will do automatically, not ejecting or spinning up a disc is a sure sign of a fault.

Now I have a question.....there are quite a few PCMCIA hardware MPEG2 decoder cards out there, is there a single one that anyone has written drivers for an A1200 for to stream the data from the C-Cube chipset etc and playback as a 25/30fps video?

They require that your computer supports the Zoomed Video standard. It basically writes the decoded mpeg directly to the graphics mem after the SVGA chip has set up an overlay area.

You probably will not get this working on an Amiga.

Would just ask what kind of software do you use for the optical DVD drive IDEFix?

I Have try that on my old a500+/020 with os3.9 without any boingbags the device I use is "adide_atapi.device" in your sys:devs folder, but this is maybe not good enough on an old controller like I have on my a500+ with alfapower plus model with simm.

I would say if I just use normal CD drives on my alfapower set as slave I have no problems with that, I think the a500+ and the controller I got maybe not support DCVD media or need a fix/patch so it can see a full DVD, proparly old 4 gb limit.
Maybe an DVD driver or something can get it work correctly, the drive work fine if I just insert a CD instead, note this dvd drive is not a dvd burner model is pioneeer dvd-rom dvd-120s1.01.

I can see DVD and/or cd0: icon on my os3.9 but context is crappy when I try with a DVD media, what else to do?
I know I have it working, on A4000 with Fastata mkIV card on os3.9 with boingbags 1+2 that works for me, with idefix.

This a500+/020 setup os3.9 is just for fun, I just have the boingbags on that DVD therefore it's important if I could get it to work on my a500+/020 also.

Any clues?

On my A1200, I just use the atapi.device from idefix package (to activate the second ide channel and drive) and it works fine.

I will give this is a try http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/DVD-RAM

@FOL I also will try just atapi.device thanks for advice :)
I have try "atapi.device" it does not found the drive with findcd tool :(

If find device doesnt see your drive, then its either not connected or not setup right.

I use Buffered interface, on channel 1 is my HDD, on channel 2 is my DVD drive. Under findcd, it detects mine under atapi.device.

I know it's connected because when I use "adide_atapi.device" then it shown using findcd.
So not connected?
Not there so I guess the setup maybe be wrong, but it find the drive when using "adide_atapi.device" but context is messy when I use normal cd medias on that drive then it's working.

Is it possible that DVD drive can be defective reading dvd media but works with CD medias only?

I don't know what you excatly mean with "Buffered interface" I use alfapower plus controller - hd as master works unit0, dvd or other cd drive as slave works for me unit1.

When using findcd with atapi.device it does not found anything.