-=PCTechTalk=- CD-R/RW Drive
- From: "Maninder Johur" <maninderjohur@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 06:28:54 +0530
While the connection boils down to the way you use your PC, I enclose an
excerpt from Andy McFadden's CD FAQ, the bible for CD information.
Subject: [5-15] How should I configure my system for an ATAPI CD recorder?
(2001/02/16)
(This section assumes you're using a PC.)
You generally want the hard drives and CD-ROM drives on different channels,
or CD-ROM accesses can interfere with hard drive accesses. Most older
devices can't share the ATA bus, so only one device can be active at a time.
For example, suppose you have a hard drive as master and a CD recorder as
slave on the same channel. If you issue a command to write some blocks to
the CD recorder, the system can't read anything from the hard drive until
the CD write request completes. As long as the system is fast enough, and
can read enough data between writes to keep the CD recorder's buffer full,
this doesn't create any problems.
If you put the hard drive and the CD recorder on different channels, the
commands are allowed to overlap. In practice, on Win9x systems this doesn't
make much of a difference, because Win9x won't usually access more than one
IDE device at a time. On systems like OS/2 and Linux, the difference is more
significant.
Proposals for command overlap (sending commands to multiple devices
simultaneously) and command queuing (sending several commands to the same
device all at once) were introduced as optional features during the
development of the ATA-3 specification. They're part of ATA/ATAPI 4. For
command overlap to be effective, both devices on the channel must support
the feature. If the hard drive does but the CD recorder doesn't, you won't
get much benefit.
If you're not sure that your CD recorder has an ATAPI-4 interface, you
probably ought to put it on a separate channel from the hard drive. For
information related to this topic, see "Does an old HD or CDROM slow down a
new drive?", in section 5.3 of the IDE/Fast-ATA FAQ at
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/enhanced-IDE/part1/.
The recommended configuration looks like this:
primary channel:
master: first hard drive
slave: (optional) second hard drive
secondary channel:
master: CD-ROM drive
slave: CD-R/CD-RW drive
It doesn't seem to matter whether the CD-ROM or CD recorder is the master.
If you use the CD recorder as your only CD-ROM drive, make it the master.
Having the CD-ROM drive and the CD recorder on the same channel doesn't
necessarily prevent CD-to-CD copying, but you're still better off writing
from the hard drive. At high speeds, the CPU utilization for CD-ROM drives
without DMA enabled can be very high.
Keep the cables as short as you can. Sometimes the longer (60cm) cables will
work fine with one drive but start having integrity problems when two
devices are attached.
NOTE: the Intel PIIX Bus Mastering IDE driver may interfere with the ability
to use a CD recorder. The typical symptom is a system hang when writing or
test-writing to a disc. The latest version of the Intel driver (which
includes an uninstaller) can be found at
http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/drivers/busmastr/. The Adaptec
page http://www.adaptec.com/support/configuration/cdrecide.html also
describes the problem.
NOTE: The VIA Bus Mastering IDE drivers are similarly afflicted. See
http://www.via.com.tw/support/faq.htm.
Memorex has some notes about this on
http://www.memorex.com/tech/cd/gen.html.
Win95/Win98 users can resolve the bus-mastering IDE driver problems by
installing Win98 Second Edition (a/k/a Win98SE) after removing any
manufacturer-supplied bus-mastering drivers.
The ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programmer's Interface) layer is used during CD
recording, even for IDE recorders. See section (4-44) for information on how
to make sure you have what you need. The original Win95A/B WinASPI may have
problems with IDE recorders.
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