Vintage Computer & Vintage Owner Need Help with CD/DVD Drives & Media

[camtechman]

brunel,

You must be a mind reader!

I was about to post a request for such a link (I used to have one but somehow it's got lost)

Many thanks,

Tony

[camtechman]

I see it's for DVDs, does it work on CDs ?

[brunel]

Only functions with DVD

[camtechman]

Can you suggest one that functions with CD's ?

[julie_m]

Any Linux distribution! Just run

# wodim -scanbus

for information about your optical drives.

[camtechman]

I wish I knew what any of that meant.

[jamesperrett]

A utility called Plextools can certainly identify CD manufacturers but really there's only one thing you need to know about modern CD-R's - they're all rubbish apart from JVC/Taiyo Yuden. I've tried quite a few alternatives for work as we don't have an approved supplier for JVC discs but I've yet to find any current discs that reach the same standard. In fact, I've yet to find any other current disc that burns with anything resembling a reasonable error rate as measured in Plextools. Verbatim are certainly no longer the same quality that they used to be - the last lot I bought from RS were really made by Moser Baer in India.

Plextools can be found at

http://www.plextor-digital.com/index...id=470&lang=en

[camtechman]

I've just run a test with the idetification prog and, at first I thought the results had got stuck. The 3 recent purchases of CD's: Verbatim, TDK & the suspect Maxells were all identified as Moser Baer India Ltd.

Yesterday I spent most of the day testing/playing some of my previouly home recorded music CD's on my Technics set-up.

Some were TDK but most were Maxell which had been previously bought but, in May this year, when I started to run out, I bought a further 100 Maxells (from the same supplier).

All of the earlier recorded TDK & Maxells, without exception, were recognised & data diplayed on the CD readout and all played with fail.

Then I tried to play (my newly acquired & recorded Maxells) and not one played, nor even reconised, although they play on my PC ?!

Ho Hum

[paulsherwin]

As I said earlier, it'll be a bad batch. I don't think there's much point in identifying the OEM manufacturer other than curiosity, as all the big boys use similar technology, and they all produce the odd bad batch.

There are also odd compatibility problems between some blanks, some burners and some audio players. I have a DVD-R burner which works perfectly with other computers but gives problems with some blanks on audio players.

[arjoll]

Originally Posted by jamesperrett

Verbatim are certainly no longer the same quality that they used to be - the last lot I bought from RS were really made by Moser Baer in India.

I thought the azo dye ones (DataLifePlus) were still made by Mitsubishi Chemical. I might test the ones I have here.

[jamesperrett]

Originally Posted by arjoll

I thought the azo dye ones (DataLifePlus) were still made by Mitsubishi Chemical. I might test the ones I have here.

I didn't know they were still available - they certainly have a better reputation for quality than most other manufacturers.

Paul - when you are creating CD masters for paying clients, disc quality and compatibility is very important. That's probably why I'm more obsessive than most casual users when it comes to CD-R quality. I've yet to see what I consider to be an acceptable quality disc made by Moser Baer - the error rates are something like 10X higher than the JVC discs.

[dave cox]

Fake branded disks ?
There is quite a difference between the price of unbranded and branded disks, an unscrupulous person could make many times the profit with some colour printing ...


dc

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by jamesperrett

Paul - when you are creating CD masters for paying clients, disc quality and compatibility is very important. That's probably why I'm more obsessive than most casual users when it comes to CD-R quality. I've yet to see what I consider to be an acceptable quality disc made by Moser Baer - the error rates are something like 10X higher than the JVC discs.

That is a very fair point, but there is a difference between error rates which are detectable by test software and error rates which prevent a disc being recognised or cause audible glitches. The latter are never acceptable and indicate faulty production, while the former may be standard practice for cheap blanks produced for the domestic market.

[jamesperrett]

Originally Posted by dave cox

Fake branded disks ?
There is quite a difference between the price of unbranded and branded disks, an unscrupulous person could make many times the profit with some colour printing ...

Why bother when the established brands are already the equivalent of fakes? TDK outsourced their discs to the cheapest manufacturer they could find many years ago and most of the other brands followed suit soon after. Only JVC/Taiyo Yuden and certain types of Verbatim/Mitsubishi discs remained manufactured by the people whose name they carried. If you are buying TDK/Maxell/Sony/Fuji and paying more than 10p per disc then you are wasting your money as that's about all their discs are worth.

[paulsherwin]

10p is a bit low. 20p is more typical for normal domestic quantities.

I don't consider CD-Rs or DVD-Rs of any brand reliable storage technology for anything that matters. Even if the ex factory error rates are good, there's no knowing how the dyes will age.

[WreckTangle]

I tolerated for a long time a later model Sony DVD/RW drive that refused to recognise newer brands of blank CD-R media despite working happily with CD-RW discs and older CD-Rs. In the end, after a lot of Googling, I followed advice to upgrade the firmware on the actual drive. IIRC this also prompted Windows XP to re-install its drivers for the device. This combination worked and I have since been able to use a packet of TDK CD-Rs that were previously unrecognisable.

There would appear to be a 2003 update for the Hitachi-LG GCE-8400B.

http://esupport.sony.com/swu/499/US/EN/

Use at your own risk.

[arjoll]

Originally Posted by jamesperrett

I didn't know they were still available - they certainly have a better reputation for quality than most other manufacturers.

They certainly are - in the AP region at least.

[DragonForce]

There are an awful lot of CDR's made by so say reputable companies, and sold as genuine OEM disks, when in fact they're fake. I don't suppose you can really ever tell who made the disks in the first place, after all, it's just a matter of recording a data track to identify the maker at manufacture. As an example, I've had fake disks from Tesco and Asda, sold as Maxell or TDK (among others), identified as a Taiyo Yuden or Ritek product, the serial number proved to be false. Not saying the disks were bad, they certainly weren't - just that they were NOT made by the company who's identifier appeared in the list produced by my burning software (Nero).

I'd recommend Taiyo Yuden CDR and DVDR over and above pretty much anything, but just because software identifies them as TY products, doesn't make them so.

It seems that genuine, reputable sellers are just as prone to this problem as we, the end users are - which is a shame.

[camtechman]

Just to report.

Did a lot of testing of the sus Maxells in all permutations and sent 10 to my friend who's recently bought a quality, separate Hi Fi CD player.

Each disc was notated with what, how and specifics about the recording etc. 6 out of the 10 weren't even recognised by the player, 2 gave the time & number of tracks on the disc, 1 played & the other wouldn't, the last 2 worked well.

I won't bore you with what else I've been doing to determine a fault pattern but, nuff said they're duff and I awaiting reply from seller.

However, it seems that problems always comes in 3's !!!

Yesterday I was doing a test to see if they would accept mixed data (at least I have a use for that) and after creating a few disks on my DVD drive I decided to see/hear the results by trying to play them back on my 'new' CD drive.

The first disk functioned well but I was unable to get anymore to activate. On insertion into the CD unit, the green LED lit & flickered as usual as it tried to detect the CD but instead of it 'firing up' and spinning, it kept on doing short bursts (of trying to scan & the LED flashed accordingly) but nothing further happened and it eventually stopped.

Suspecting it was the disks again, I inserted a known, commercially recorded CD (Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds") and the same thing happened, it won't even play that......now what the hell's happened?!

I'm now going to find a dark, quiet place to lie down and suck my thumb......

[paulsherwin]

When you load a duff CD into a computer drive, it tries to determine what sort of CD it is (ISO, audio etc). If the firmware encounters hard read errors which it's not expecting it can become confused and just sits there flashing an LED until you power cycle it.

Try doing the standard thing of turning it off (at the mains) and on again.

It sounds as if your Maxells are definitely duff.