Matsushita "MATSHITADVD-ROM SR-8585" DVD drive Linux mount problem

Dear All,
I have the above DVDROM drive in a dual boot system (Linux
2.6.20, WinXPPRO/SP3) on an Asus A7V333 motherboard. With certain
(DVD-R) media (TITANIUM FULL FACE PRINTABLE 8X 4.7gb DVD-R) the data
format discs will not mount reliably under Linux. They mount w/o
problem under WinXP. Other DVD-R media (eg. DATAWRITE YELLOW 8X 4.7gb
GENERAL PURPOSE DVD-R) mounts fine under both OSes. Both media types
were burnt on the same (but not this) machine using the same S/W
(Windows/Nero & ISO9660 format).

mount usually reports "mount: No medium found" despite the disc being
present. Moreover the drive makes no attempt to spin-up the disc or
put its orange access LED on. The symptoms are reminiscent of trying
to mount a CDRW disc in certain old CDROM drives -- these older drives
cannot see such discs due to the lower reflectivity of their surfaces
and mount just fails with the above message.

Another Linux machine with the same kernel/distro but a different
DVDROM drive mounts the disc w/o problem.

I have found that by careful pressing of the drive's eject button and
immediately reissuing the mount command, the drive can be made to
spin-up and sometimes it will recognise the disc's presence. Once
mounted it reads the media contents faultlessly.

I spent some time messing around with hdparm (including -w to perform
a device reset) but nothing would make the drive re-check for the
disc's presence or make it put its orange LED on etc.

I grepped the Linux kernel source, looking for any workarounds/problem
reports etc. relating to Matsu****a DVD-ROM drives but there were
none...

It must be the drive's firmware rather that the BIOS or OS which
determines whether there is a disc present -- which makes the OS
specific nature of this seem even stranger? I notice that there are
firmware upgrades listed for this drive but the accompanying blurb
seems to relate only to DVD region related stuff and in any case the
driver download site's links that I tried were broken and Panasonic's
website just lists this model as obsolete with no firmware upgrades
available.

I am reluctant to just throw the drive or the ~50 blank discs away.
Can anybody suggest why Linux mostly fails to mount these discs when
WinXP has no problem? Has anyone else seen such behaviour with this
or a similar drive model?

Cheers
Tom.

Ps. syslog/dmesg lists the drive as;

hdc: MAT****ADVD-ROM SR-8585, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: ATAPI 61X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache, UDMA(33)

and hdparm -i /dev/hdc reports;

Model=MAT****ADVD-ROM SR-8585, FwRev=1W26, SerialNo=
Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
(maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2
AdvancedPM=no
* signifies the current active mode


Ps. The email address in the header is just a spam-trap.

--
Tom Crane, Dept. Physics, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham Hill,
Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, England.
Email: T.Crane at rhul dot ac dot uk
Fax: +44 (0) 1784 472794

[email]UHAP023@alpha1.rhbnc.ac.uk[/email] wrote:[color=blue]
> Dear All,
> I have the above DVDROM drive in a dual boot system (Linux
> 2.6.20, WinXPPRO/SP3) on an Asus A7V333 motherboard. With certain
> (DVD-R) media (TITANIUM FULL FACE PRINTABLE 8X 4.7gb DVD-R) the data
> format discs will not mount reliably under Linux.[/color]

I have encountered a problem with recordable disks burned using Nero
using Microsoft Windows XP. I don't know the cause, but the software is
not consistently reliable. It could be a problem with XP or with Nero.

Boot your recording machine into Linux (using a livecd), and burn the
same iso image onto both media types. Verify the checksum of the .iso
image against the checksum of the produced media.

Do both disks read in the drive now?

Does the drive support both plus and minus type dvdr media?

You can get a "Datawrite Yellow" media that is in plus format. I wonder
if you have a plus and minus issue with one of the drives, for example
either the reading drive or the writing drive does not support your
media type.

If your drive supports plus media, you might want to try switching to
that, however plus media is less portable and may not be useable if you
want to create disks that play in a conventional dvd player.

Also, not all dvd media works in all dvd drives. This has been a known
problem since the invention of dvd drives. You have to test your drives
against your preferred media.

I know that "Datawrite Yellow" media is generally considered good, and I
have used that media here with success.

I have colleagues that use a different media type that works on their drives,
but does not work reliably on any of my drives. Strangely in a couple of
nstances, the drives that my colleages use are the same model as mine,
and were bought in the same shop at the same time as mine.
[color=blue]
> It must be the drive's firmware rather that the BIOS or OS which
> determines whether there is a disc present[/color]

Yeah. Some drives put a light on when there is a disk in the drive.
Media presence is determined by the drive, not the operating system.
[color=blue]
> I am reluctant to just throw the drive or the ~50 blank discs away.[/color]

You could give the disks to someone else who has a dvd recorder.

Regards,

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.

Mark Hobley <markhobley@hotpop.donottypethisbit.com> wrote:
: [email]UHAP023@alpha1.rhbnc.ac.uk[/email] wrote:
: > Dear All,
: > I have the above DVDROM drive in a dual boot system (Linux
: > 2.6.20, WinXPPRO/SP3) on an Asus A7V333 motherboard. With certain
: > (DVD-R) media (TITANIUM FULL FACE PRINTABLE 8X 4.7gb DVD-R) the data
: > format discs will not mount reliably under Linux.


Thanks for the followup;

: I have encountered a problem with recordable disks burned using Nero
: using Microsoft Windows XP. I don't know the cause, but the software is
: not consistently reliable. It could be a problem with XP or with Nero.

: Boot your recording machine into Linux (using a livecd), and burn the
: same iso image onto both media types. Verify the checksum of the .iso
: image against the checksum of the produced media.

I did think of doing this but the burner machine has only one optical
drive and insufficient RAM to run Knoppix from memory.

: Do both disks read in the drive now?

: Does the drive support both plus and minus type dvdr media?

It does work with DVD+RW. I've not tried other media types.

: You can get a "Datawrite Yellow" media that is in plus format. I wonder
: if you have a plus and minus issue with one of the drives, for example
: either the reading drive or the writing drive does not support your
: media type.

I don't think so. The problem occurs only with the TITANIUM brand,
Linux and the Matsu****a drive. Regarding integrity of the burnt image, I
tried dumping the track with dd and Joerg Shilling's readcd program. Both
fail without locating anything to read -- just as mount does. It really
does seem to be a disc-presence recognition problem...

Cheers
Tom.

--
Ps. The email address in the header is just a spam-trap.

Tom Crane, Dept. Physics, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham Hill,
Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, England.
Email: T.Crane at rhul dot ac dot uk
Fax: +44 (0) 1784 472794

[email]UHAP023@alpha1.rhbnc.ac.uk[/email] wrote:[color=blue]
> I did think of doing this but the burner machine has only one optical
> drive and insufficient RAM to run Knoppix from memory.[/color]

You could try Puppy Linux.
[color=blue]
> It really does seem to be a disc-presence recognition problem[/color]

I have seen this problem, Also I had a different problem with bootable disks
not being bootable using Matsu****a CDROM drives, though the disks were
otherwise readable. By swapping out the drives, I found that the disks
would boot fine from the same computer.

I would try and get some different disk types and try them. Find a good
one and stick with it, or return the drive back to the shop and get a
different model.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.