Re: [PLUG] Gnome - xcdroast

Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net> · Wed, 07 Jul 2004 09:11:43 -0400

Michael Leone wrote:
On Tue, 2004-07-06 at 14:40, Douglas Lentz wrote:

Perhaps someone with more knowledge of burning or cdroast can answer this...

I have a "remanufactured" Acer CD R/W drive that I picked up for change 
at Computer Renaissance a few years ago. It sat on the shelf until I put 
together my bare-bones box. And yes,  I have burned CDs (audio and data) 
on it using xcdroast. It just doesn't really like to work. I average 
about eight failures for each successful burn. Usually, it reports a bad 
starting sector, performs OPC,  the red light goes on, it tries for a 
while, it reports that fifo was 0% full, and ejects the CD. So I try 
again, switching back and forth between DAO, TAO, and RAW16, and 
eventually it works and the CD burns fine. Slow - I burn at 2X.

Older burners had problems with buffer underruns.  Their write speed 
capability increased faster than a software solution was devised to 
tackle the problem of a burner that wants to write faster than the 
source can deliver data.  With newer drives, buffer underrun protection 
is written into the firmware. 
If you read the other thread, I am just starting to try gnu and Linux 
software for burning and have no experience yet, but I know that the 
win32 software (e.g. Nero) has a software solution for drives that don't 
handle this with their firmware.  Never having tried to use Nero with an 
older drive, though, I have no idea how effective this software solution 
is on older drives.  I know that Nero can report how many times a buffer 
underrun was prevented, and that seems to work. I don't know if this is 
possible with xcdroast, but Nero allows for a simulated pre-burn that 
determines the source's effective data transfer rate and adjusts the bun 
speed accordingly.
I'm honestly curious - a name brand Sony 52X IDE CD-RW is like $50
(after rebate) - non-name brands are probably less. Wouldn't it make
more sense to just junk that clunker and get a new one, rather than
spend so much on blown CDs, and your time? (I'll go out on a limb here,
and presume that your time is worth something, at least).

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