More Swapping - burning CDs with PS/2
- From: "Peter H. Wendt" <peterwendt@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 20:21:22 +0200
Hi !
The theme was "what do you need to burn CDs with a PS/2"
It ain't easy and sometimes it is neccessary to even go a couple of steps back to achieve good results.
Here's what I did.
The technical base as largely known:
- IBM PS/2 77i ("Lacuna")
- 64MB Parity RAM
- Kingston Turbochip 133
- 256K L2 cache module (WT)
- Token Ring Adapter 16/4
- M-ACPA audio
- Future Domain SCSI ("Patriot")
- onboard S3-928 video
- Seagate IDE HD 4.5GB internally
- Teac CD-532S SCSI CD-ROM internally
- Liteon SOHR-5238S with IDE-2-SCSI converter in 3510 Enclosure (ext.)[REM: The Liteon is "Smart Burn enabled". It is a pretty decent CD / CDRW unit. Maybe I try later with a DVD / CD / CDRW unit too. But that one I have is installed in the PC300GL and I dislike to take it apart again.]
Due to problems with the PODP83 and the cache and a lot strange and undetermined crashes I decided to rip out my last known-good Kingston Turbochip 133 (PLCC AMD 5x86-133ADW with VRM interposer / socket) from the Compaq 486 Portable and set the 256K L2 cache back to WT mode. The Kingston does not support WB L2 anyway AFAIR, so it was no loss at all.
After further fruitless experimenting with Win98SE I decided to return to Win95C.
Made a fresh install of it, added the M-ACPA drivers, some multimedia stuff (sounds mainly) and added the S3-928 drivers. Plus proper network support via Token Ring. Works like a charm. Set the video to hi-color / 800 x 600 mode, where graphics won't look that odd as in 256 colors at 1024 x 768. Apparently the 800 x 600 mode appears faster. But I have no data to confirm it - it just looks better and faster.
At that point I GHOSTed the C:-partition for the case that I louse it up and don't want to start all over again from scratch. The image is -stored uncompressed- about 87MB.
Now: Win95 has a known deficite with the "common controls", therefore I ran the 50comupd.exe. Nero 5.5 won't install without that update under W95 anyway.
Then I installed Nero 5.5 version 10.56 (latest 5.5 version - can be downloaded from AHEAD - but you need a serial number if you make a permanent install and not only use the Demo.)
Result after some reboots: Nero chokes on e.g. "media information" retrival during the access of the burner. Detecting the burner even times out in most cases.
Know that problem: ASPI-related. Too old WINASPI drivers.
Therefore I ran FORCEASPII (1.7, which uses the ASPI 4.60 (1021) version I happen to have).
Reboot ... and ... Fine.
Burner gets detected within seconds, media informations returned after a few seconds as well and the CD-RW "erase" works fine. That is a good test for the overall SCSI chain if it works at all without the risk to turn good CD-Rs into beer coasters.
Then I burned some 520 MB onto CDRW. Goes at 4x speed only anyway.
No problem. Slow, but burns through. Even the verify finished with no errors found.
After some speed testing I found that the IDE HD is good for 6x - 8x burning only (1.000 - 1.300 KB/s transfer rate).
The IDE-part of the Lacuna is not just overwhelming to say the least. It is old-fashioned 1st generation single channel PIO, you cannot await wonders from it.
With an industrially made CD-ROM in the Teac the data rate across the "Patriot" is 1.2 - 1.5 M/s (8x - 10x burning speed) in CD2CD copy mode.
Now I need to find out, if the system still runs stable if I disable the read-caching for e.g. burning from network etc.
The system did that with the PODP already, but not reliable. It blue-screened occasionally with a VXD call, but returned to normal operation after [ENTER] in 9 of 10 cases. On the 10th is simply froze and had to be "master resetted" (power cycled).
Then I'm going to do CD-to-CD copies with bypassing the IDE (disable caching from floppy / CD). Let's see what pitholes are waiting there.
Maybe I go that far to remove the IDE HD and install one of my U-SCSI drives in it and repeat the setup :-)
Conclusion: a well suited Lacuna should fulfill the "most burning needs". Combined with a non-Smartburn SCSI burner at 2x or even 4x it should do. If you want additional safety you need to get a Smartburn enabled burner, which are IDE mainly - and need to get the IDE-2-SCSI interface as well.
-- Very friendly greetings from Peter in Germany http://members.aol.com/mcapage0/mcaindex.htm
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