Monster IDE Drives

[Leon Goldstein]

Tim Wunder wrote:

> On 2/13/2004 10:18 AM, I believe that Leon Goldstein wrote:
> <snippage>
>
>> Just don't use an ATA66/100 80 wire/40 pin cable with a CDROM or DVD.
>>
>
> I'm curious. Why not? 

A few months ago I started to burn my monthly backup (Plextor 40x, 
xcdroast) and  my burn failed the verification.
I then tried burning with my Win98 install and the  Roxio software from 
Plextor.  Also no good.  The first coasters my Plextor 40 has ever made.

The drive had been working just fine until that incident.

I got through to Plextor tech support: I downloaded the firmware update 
(that is another reenactment of the Oberammergau passion play story in 
itself) and ran the self-test.  That passed; the drive was OK.  Next I 
was told to install the jumper and disable the Plextor's DMA.  That 
helped, but the burn speed dropped.  In chatting with another Plextor 
techie, who was interested in Linux, the conversation turned to 
hardware, and I mentioned I had installed round ATA100 cables. (My 
burner and DVD are on the secondary IDE channel, CDRW is master.)  The 
techie mentioned that there were problems using the ATA100 cables with 
the Plextor on the second IDE channel.  So, I replaced the round cable 
with the original 40 pin flat cable, and the Plextor worked.  I then 
removed the DMA jumper (removing it enables DMA) and the Plextor still 
worked.

Anyhow, if you are using a round ATA100 cable and your burner starts 
acting up, try reverting to the old flat cable.
I have not seen any 40-wire round cables locally.

-- 
Leon A. Goldstein

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