My cd/dvd drive can read CDR but not original CD?

[guybrush]

This is weird; I have been using CDR and CDRW with my dvd drive on my A1200 (it is an old mac pro Cd/dvd PATA burner. It works fine with those burned cd but won't work at all with standard CD.


Found in the attic a couple of old Amiga Forever cover CD; so I popped them in the drive and it spin, clicks and then the tray open to spit out the disk. If I pop in the CDR, it clicks for a bit then it start to spin and the icon appear on the WB.


I can't really figure out what is wrong here... I had drives that would read only standard CD and not CDR and CDRW, since the coating is different, so the laser lens may not hit the right wavelength to read the disk; but it is the first time I see a drive reading CDR/W and not original disks.


And it is not the disks either; tested them on my PC and they work just fine; no scratches nor dirt on them at all.

[Predseda]

Happens sometimes. I have the same problem in my car - plays burnt CDs, but not originals.

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Happens sometimes. I have the same problem in my car - plays burnt CDs, but not originals.

How did you fix the problem?

[lesta_smsc]

Sometimes the media/dye used on CDs can affect read. It can also be affected by the write speed user on the CDs, whereby anything over 1-2x can cause issues with older CD drives (generally) being able to read them.

The issue with RW CDs has been one known for a long time. Even in car stereos would be picky and I believe CDRW would specifically be mentioned as incompatible.

Your option is to make an image of the CD to another CD with compatible dye and write it as the lowest speed possible.

Hope this helps.

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Sometimes the media/dye used on CDs can affect read. It can also be affected by the write speed user on the CDs, whereby anything over 1-2x can cause issues with older CD drives (generally) being able to read them.

The issue with RW CDs has been one known for a long time. Even in car stereos would be picky and I believe CDRW would specifically be mentioned as incompatible.

Your option is to make an image of the CD to another CD with compatible dye and write it as the lowest speed possible.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply; although I have no problems with CDRW; they work just fine. In fact that's the only thing that my drive read...


The issue is that I can't read standard CD; those are CD cover disks, so not something that was burned.

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by guybrush

How did you fix the problem?

I was not able to solve it I use mp3 add on instead.

[guybrush]

I really can't make any sense of this; but I have to assume that the IDE drive I have is not driven correctly by the Amiga (too recent? Too fast? After all it is a DVD/CD burner unit).

I should have a slim tray-less drive too, with a SATA to PATA adapter; although that drive has no eject button nor a pinhole to eject the disk; I did not use it exactly for this reason, since I have no clue how to eject a disk at that point

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by guybrush

I really can't make any sense of this; but I have to assume that the IDE drive I have is not driven correctly by the Amiga (too recent? Too fast? After all it is a DVD/CD burner unit).

I should have a slim tray-less drive too, with a SATA to PATA adapter; although that drive has no eject button nor a pinhole to eject the disk; I did not use it exactly for this reason, since I have no clue how to eject a disk at that point

IDEFIX’97 comes with a CD eject software. You can run this and it places an eject icon on the desktop. Then when you load up a CD you can drag and drop the CD icon from the desktop over to the eject icon in the desktop and the Cd should eject. Bit like the old Apple Mac OS did in the day.

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by Jpor

IDEFIX’97 comes with a CD eject software. You can run this and it places an eject icon on the desktop. Then when you load up a CD you can drag and drop the CD icon from the desktop over to the eject icon in the desktop and the Cd should eject. Bit like the old Apple Mac OS did in the day.

That seems easy enough I will dig for my slim drive then and for idefix97. Is it on aminet?

[Cubemon]

CD drives degrade over time and typically the laser gets weaker or the lense goes out of whack. I'd guess the laser is at the point of its senility where it just barely reads the CD-Rs until it gives up entirely.

It's typical for old CD-consoles like the Playstation to stop reading discs and a stop gap measure is to adjust the intensity of the laser. This can have the unfortunate side effect of the laser starting to carve visible grooves on the discs, if it's turned up too high.

I'm not sure if regular CD/DVD-ROM drives have laser adjustment pots, but the drives are pretty easy to replace.

All my old 5,25" optical drives have failed over time, and for some reason the usually flaky laptop drives are the only ones that read my old CD-R and DVD-R discs anymore.

Edit: Wikipedia says that CD-Rs have lower reflectivity than pressed discs, so it just could be, that the drive's laser is running too intense for the read sensor.

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by guybrush

That seems easy enough I will dig for my slim drive then and for idefix97. Is it on aminet?

Yes. You can find it here;

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/IDEfix97

Registration keys for all abondonware software here;

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=74384

[indigolemon]

Benchtrash does this too: http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/BenchTrash

[coldacid]

BenchTrash only provides a way of running a command through DOS when a disk (or disc) icon is dragged onto it, you'd still need to know what command you'd run from a shell window to do the ejection and set the BenchTrash icon tooltypes accordingly.

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by coldacid

BenchTrash only provides a way of running a command through DOS when a disk (or disc) icon is dragged onto it, you'd still need to know what command you'd run from a shell window to do the ejection and set the BenchTrash icon tooltypes accordingly.

True, but it comes with plenty of examples and looks nicer on your desktop

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by Cubemon

CD drives degrade over time and typically the laser gets weaker or the lense goes out of whack. I'd guess the laser is at the point of its senility where it just barely reads the CD-Rs until it gives up entirely.

It's typical for old CD-consoles like the Playstation to stop reading discs and a stop gap measure is to adjust the intensity of the laser. This can have the unfortunate side effect of the laser starting to carve visible grooves on the discs, if it's turned up too high.

I'm not sure if regular CD/DVD-ROM drives have laser adjustment pots, but the drives are pretty easy to replace.

All my old 5,25" optical drives have failed over time, and for some reason the usually flaky laptop drives are the only ones that read my old CD-R and DVD-R discs anymore.

Edit: Wikipedia says that CD-Rs have lower reflectivity than pressed discs, so it just could be, that the drive's laser is running too intense for the read sensor.

Indeed old drives may fail or may have less juice sent to the lens; I have no idea how much this drive was abused

Although my issue is not with CD-R; they actually work just fine. The original disks won't work; and I think that if it was due to the lens going bad, it should have more problems to read CD-R/RW than regular CD exactly because the CDR/RW require a stronger laser to compensate for the lower reflectivity.

I guess my drive is so powerful that can't read the better disks I will give a try with the second drive I have and see how it goes (a slim SATA drive)

[guybrush]

So, in the end it was the DVD drive.

Why is it working fine when I connect it to my windows machine? Nobody knows. Probably it belonged to a pirate, so it refuse to read original disks and just accept burned ones

I swapped it with a SATA slim drive; got a SATA to PATA adapter, and plugged it on the same PATA cable and used an adapter to change the power plug from molex to SATA and it is happily working now, reading both burned and original disks.

Still struggling with the eject though, since this drive is a slim drive with no pinhole so you need to send the cd eject signal, and neither IDEFIX nor the other apps I found on aminet seems to work with it (the drive is recognized as SCSI device from what I can tell).
I solved the problem temporarily by downloading from aminet a CD player app; that one has the eject button that works. It is a pain to have to run that cd player app just to eject the disk, but it is better than disconnect the drive every time and eject the disks using my windows pc

Is there a command that I can use to trigger the eject via Ados? seems that nothing I found on aminet works

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by guybrush

So, in the end it was the DVD drive.

Why is it working fine when I connect it to my windows machine? Nobody knows. Probably it belonged to a pirate, so it refuse to read original disks and just accept burned ones

I swapped it with a SATA slim drive; got a SATA to PATA adapter, and plugged it on the same PATA cable and used an adapter to change the power plug from molex to SATA and it is happily working now, reading both burned and original disks.

Still struggling with the eject though, since this drive is a slim drive with no pinhole so you need to send the cd eject signal, and neither IDEFIX nor the other apps I found on aminet seems to work with it (the drive is recognized as SCSI device from what I can tell).
I solved the problem temporarily by downloading from aminet a CD player app; that one has the eject button that works. It is a pain to have to run that cd player app just to eject the disk, but it is better than disconnect the drive every time and eject the disks using my windows pc

Is there a command that I can use to trigger the eject via Ados? seems that nothing I found on aminet works

You can pick up cheap laptop drives off EBay with eject buttons as little as £5 + postage. Just an idea

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by Jpor

You can pick up cheap laptop drives off EBay with eject buttons as little as £5 + postage. Just an idea

Do they all work? I remember the Amiga being picky about which drive works

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by guybrush

Do they all work? I remember the Amiga being picky about which drive works

I’ve used plenty of IDE and SCSI CD and DVD drives. Not sure why the Amiga would be picky with these?

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by guybrush

Is there a command that I can use to trigger the eject via Ados? seems that nothing I found on aminet works

In SYS:System you should find the Eject command - it doesn't have an icon but you can run it from the CLI (Note, this is under 3.2 - for older versions of the OS you may need to grab Eject from here: http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/Eject )

To eject my CD-ROM drive from the CLI I use:

Eject CD0:

For Benchtrash

Eject CD0=Park CD0: Eject Scsi NoCheck FlushDelay=0 EjectDelay=0

Add that entire line as a tooltype and you can just drag the disk icon over the trashcan to eject it (what I do).

Out of interest, how are you opening the drive to insert a disk in the first place?