Re: cdrw question


Subject: Re: cdrw question
From: Mike Tibor (tibor@lib.uaa.alaska.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 16 2002 - 15:11:30 AKST


On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Justin Dieters wrote:

>
> I'm not sure what to make of this, but maybe someone
> here might know what it might mean, if anything. My
> laptop has two leds - one for hd activity and one for
> cd-rw activity.
>
> When I burn a cd at 4x in Linux, i get the cd led on
> constantly, with the hd led flikering on and off at a
> constant pace. When I burn a cd in Win98, I get the
> cd light on by itself for 1/4 second, then it goes off
> and the hd light comes on for a 1/4 second, and then
> they both are off for a 1/4 second, and then the
> process repeats.
>
> I don't know if the difference indicates anything, but
> i'm trying to figure out the cause of my excessive
> number of coasters that are made in Linux. I've been
> attributing it to overheating because power management
> doesn't work in Linux, but I would expect the activity
> lights to behave similarly whether in Windows or
> Linux..

I'm only guessing here since you don't give any hardware details, but
assuming that your hard drive and your cdrw are both IDE, it may be that
Win98 is enabling DMA where Linux is not. You might try playing a bit
with hdparm and see what you get. Here's how I've set up a box with an
IBM DTLA 20GB drive:

[root@hero /root]# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 multcount = 0 (off)
 I/O support = 3 (32-bit w/sync)
 unmaskirq = 0 (off)
 using_dma = 1 (on)
 keepsettings = 0 (off)
 nowerr = 0 (off)
 readonly = 0 (off)
 readahead = 8 (on)
 geometry = 39870/16/63, sectors = 40188960, start = 0

[root@hero /root]# find /etc/rc.d/ -type f|xargs grep hdparm
/etc/rc.d/rc:/sbin/hdparm -d1 -c3 /dev/hda

If you don't already, it'd be good to ensure that both devices are on
separate IDE channels.

Of course, if you've got a SCSI setup, then ignore all the above. :-)

Mike



This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Wed Jan 16 2002 - 15:11:32 AKST