Internal IDE DVD Burner

[Robin Laing]

Rick Stevens wrote:
> Robin Laing wrote:
>> Gene Poole wrote:
>>>
>>> I think I've run into a bad DVD burner/reader and maybe someone can 
>>> help.  At home I've got 5-internal DVD burners and at work I have 
>>> 1-external DVD burner at my disposal. Of these 6-burners I'm pretty 
>>> sure I know the brand names of most (2-Sony; 1-HP; 1-eMachine; 
>>> 1-Pioneer; 1-LiteOn) based upon the machines they are in. I know the 
>>> Sony's are the same even though 1 is internal and the other external.
>>> The burner I seem to be have the problem with is the Pioneer.  It 
>>> doesn't seem to process a Fedora 9 x86_64 or CentOS 5.2 x86_64 
>>> installation DVD - even if the thing was burned on it!  All of the 
>>> blank DVDs are +R and I use Verbatim, HP, Imation, and TDK.  
>>> Currently the machine that houses the Pioneer is the only x86_64 
>>> machine I have, so I have no way to test on another machine.
>>> The only install DVD that is working is Fedora 8 and Fedora 10.  I 
>>> want to install CentOS 5 as it's the most like the Red Hat 5.1 I 
>>> support at work and I want to run Oracle on my machine. How can I 
>>> verify a x86_64 install DVD on a non-x86_64 machine (I've done the 
>>> md5sum and sha1sum process at DVD creation time)?  Is it because I've 
>>> burned a x86_64 DVD on a i386 machine causing me a problem?  Should I 
>>> just try -R DVDs?  Should I lower the burn speed?  Is the phantom of 
>>> the DVD haunting me?
>>>  
>>> TIA,
>>> Gene
>>>
>>
>>
>> I had a problem with burning DVD's and it turned out to be the power 
>> supply.  The voltage was at the lower limit as measured with a volt 
>> meter but when burning DVD's would go below the required voltage.  It 
>> was a pretty new power supply.  A new drive didn't fix the problem.
>>
>> The BIOS and sensor both said the supply was within spec but using a 
>> Fluke showed otherwise.
> 
> The sensors and BIOS can only check the motherboard power, not the power
> at the drives.  The +12VDC at the mobo usually comes from a different
> regulator in the power supply than the +12VDC on the drive connectors
> (good thing, too).  As Robin says, nothing beats a good DVM when
> debugging flakey stuff.
>
Actually, the sensors which are on the mother board can only tell the 
correct voltage if they are accurate.  In my case, the sensors were 
reading +5.4V when the DVM was telling me +4.7 at the mother board 
connector.

Reading through the sensors setup I found that the sensors are not 
accurate.  I was not impressed in this day and age.  If I had not had 
issues with a new DVD burner I would never had checked the voltages 
because the BIOS reading was giving me a green light.

I should compare my new system to the sensors reading.

-- 
Robin Laing