DVD Drives

[John Reiser]

Markku Kolkka wrote:
> Gregory P. Ennis kirjoitti viestissään (lähetysaika sunnuntai, 
> 21. marraskuuta 2004 23:36):
> 
>>Is there a hardware compatibility list for DVD drives that
>>work in Fedora 2 and 3?
> 
> 
> Is there a list of every IDE/ATAPI DVD drive? Any standard drive 
> should work.

Well, "should" is exactly the problem.  Unfortunately, there are
some IDE/ATATPI drives that don't work as well as specified.
See the blacklists in linux/drivers/ide/ide-dma.c and ide-lib.c.
They include even some widely-sold drives!  In most cases linux
works around the problem(s) by not using dma, or by reducing the
level of PIO access; so the system runs, but with more overhead.

Also, in the particular case of DVD and/or CD-ROM drives, the spec
allows the drive to be uncooperative when trying to read beyond
the end of recorded data.  This is the ultimate cause for many
of the "mediacheck fails" complaints on distribution CD-ROMs
(although the linux software IDE driver must share the blame.)
I have seen neither a blacklist nor a whitelist for this situation.

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