Acer CDRW 2010A & Nero

[rakki]

this is driving me nuts... Nero is supposedly one of the best burner progs around but right now in combination with the Acer 2010A it's spitting the dummy on brand new CDRs and telling me data verification error when I am burning !

WTF is it with this thing....

[nsu]

I think I had the same problem between an Acer CDRW drive and Nero. Can't remember the exact setup, but somehow Nero refused to work.

[dvdboy]

As nsu said it could be a compalibilty problem see if you can get a patch for your writer from nero or change the brand of cd's:)

[rakki]

If it's compatibility between Nero and Acer CDRW then I'll switch to Adaptec instead.... because I'm all updated out on the Nero path, and Acer doesn't have any firmware upgrades for it either...

the really annoying thing is that the burn seems to complete properly, and the files seem to play, but I can't *trust* the result because it failed data verification... which is about as good as a coaster when you want long term storage !

[walter degroot]

I've given up on nero. I d/l the demo twice
one didn't work - missing files--
and the other was expired
if they want to act dumb - let them
and i will let them go on without me .

[rakki]

the really annoying thing about Nero is that it tells you about a failed burn AFTER the CD's coastered... Adaptec's test procedure at least allows me to check if the CDR can handle the burn speed.. MAYBE...


because right now I am trying to figure out if it's Via's BM DMA drivers causing the errors when I try burn above 12X.... (and i think it is ! :()

[brad]

Rakki,

Which version of windows are you using, and which VIA chipset? If 98 or 98-se on a socket-7 or socket-a board, then you should not need the VIA busmaster driver at all unless you have an internal zip drive. If the burner is DMA capable you can enable DMA in the device manager in the normal manner, just like you would for a hard disk. If the burner doesn't work correctly that way, I would be far more inclined to believe the burner has a problem, quite possibly firmware. I've never seen a case where the BM driver was needed to run a cd burder.

Brad

[rakki]

Hi Brad,

I'm running Win2K on a MSI K7T266A Pro 2, with the CDRW hooked up as master to IDE 2 (80 pin cable). (that means VIA KT266a chipset I guess.. )

I've uninstalled the IDE Miniport drivers that Via had for Win2k, and switched to the latest 4in1. Before installing it if I use the standard Win2k PCI IDE drivers both the CDRW and it's IDE cablemate (DVDrom) would run on PIO 4. That's with "enable DMA if available" options set.

At the moment The burner itself is currently set to DMA multiword mode 2, and the DVDrom to UDMA Mode 5.

I wasn't happy with the performance that Nero's CDspeed was reporting for the drives (12X read max) and after reading some web docs was lead to believe that I need to get the damn things running with some form of DMA - and to do this, installed the VIA mobo drivers...

Now on Via4in1 Nero's CDspeed utility works properly and reports good read speeds (on the IDE miniport however it just reports read errors !?()

Now with Burns....
1. the 12X burns on PIO mode 4 seemed to run along happily enough, although Nero would spit out the occassional coaster that failed data verification (which means I can't trust the damn thing to run WITHOUT data verification)

2. on the current DMA with BM installed 12X seems to run fine as well.. although at higher speeds (with rated medium) Adaptec was spitting out some kind of error reporting that the command error - invalid parameter list.... (or something to that effect). This is during the pre-burn test.


Basically at the moment I can't trust the CDRW to do what it's supposed to at higher than 12X speeds, and with Adaptec's test burn and Nero's data verification, any speed advantage are cancelled out...

and I can't find any firmware for the CDRW2010a. :(

[brad]

I'm running 98-se on the same mobo (is kt266a) with a Plextor cd-rw and everything works great. I have no experience at all with win2k but will see what I can find out. Also wonder if nero is the problem because I've read an awfull lot about it being a large pain in the !!! for other folks.

Brad

[rakki]

G'day Brad,

Well, right after I put in the order for the system with EYO I started noticing people recommending Plextors. (waaaaaah)

I can't decide whether it's the CD medium causing the problem or it's the DMA drivers... because the supposedly 16X CDRs I have here Adaptec refuses to allow me to burn above 12X speed (no option) and I've uninstalled Nero to get its ASPI out of Adaptec's way...

situation's rather confused.... and a spindle batch of 50 CDRs which seems to test and burn okay with Adaptec at 12X can supposedly, according to Adaptec, burn at 20X, but anything above 12X causes command parameter errors...

which is a rather annoying situation coz whether the DMA drivers work properly hinges on whether it burns above 12X (I think ) and I am sorta stuck on the fence :)