Last Attempt at fixing DVD drives before abandoning Fedora Core

[Dave Gutteridge]

Okay, this is it. As much as I am rooting for Fedora Core to be a stable 
(enough) desktop environment, the inability to reliably read DVDs is a 
deal breaker. I am making one last ditch effort to see if anyone can 
help, but if not, I'm going to have to give up on Fedora.

I hope someone can help out here and at least give me a reason why my 
DVD drives are not working, if not solve them, so that I can assess 
whether or not I'm liable to encounter the same problem with another 
distribution of Linux (which is why I haven't already switched).

This will be the most complete description of the problem, and if this 
doesn't do it, then I have to call it quits.

1. The Set Up:
Fedora Core 4, complete yum update as of minutes before writing this 
email, latest kernel.
Desktop PC, Pentium III, 600Mhz.


2. The Problem:
When I put any kind of DVD, whether it's data or video, into my DVD 
drives, they work poorly or not at all. Data CDs and Audio CDs work 
fine, and I can even *write* DVDs on my external DVD player and burn CDs 
on my other drives.
It's only in reading DVDs that the problem arrises.
External USB DVD drive: Will usually show the DVD icon on the desktop, 
but copying data is extremely slow and will almost always fail. I have 
succeeded maybe once or twice in copying data from a DVD when the amount 
of data is less than 100 MB. But not reliably, and not in any pattern 
that I can reproduce.
Internal DVD 1: Putting a DVD in this drive causes the light to flash as 
if it is reading, but no icon comes up and it does not become 
accessible. Ejection is impossible unless I reboot and press the front 
eject button during the power on sequence, or if I force an ejection by 
inserting a pin into the manual eject hole on the front of the drive. 
This DVD drive is on the sequence of boot devices (between floppy disk 
and before hard drive), so if there is a DVD present in the time of 
booting, it will delay the boot process by five to ten minutes and 
eventually show an error before booting.
Internal DVD 2: Will spend about a minute reading the DVD before an icon 
shows up on the desktop. Copying takes a long time (at least twice the 
time it takes to copy the same number of files under Windows XP), but it 
will actually complete. However, while it is copying files, it seems to 
slow the whole system down, to the point where mouse movement and typing 
is delayed.

In Xine, when attempting to play a DVD, or an audio CD from my DVD 
drive, I get the following error:
There is no plugin available to handle 'dvd:/'. Maybe MRC syntax is 
wrong or file/stream dource does not exist.

I hope someone will be able to figure out what the issue is and help me 
get this resolved.

Dave

Additional info:
Here is what is in the auto.misc file:
cd        -fstype=iso9660,ro,nosuid,nodev    :/dev/cdrom

Here is the result of ls -l /dev/dvd:
[root at localhost dev]# ls -l /dev/dvd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Jul 14 2005 /dev/dvd -> hdb

Here are the results of hdparm:
[root at localhost dev]# hdparm -i /dev/dvd
/dev/dvd:

Model=RICOH DVD/CDRW MP9060, FwRev=1.50, SerialNo=
Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 mdma0 mdma1 *mdma2
AdvancedPM=no

* signifies the current active mode

[root at localhost dev]# hdparm -i /dev/dvd1

/dev/dvd1:

Model=SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-608, FwRev=bp22, SerialNo=
Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
(maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 mdma0 mdma1 *mdma2
AdvancedPM=no

* signifies the current active mode

[root at localhost dev]# hdparm -i /dev/dvd2

/dev/dvd2:
HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Invalid argument
[root at localhost dev]# hdparm -i /dev/dvdwriter

/dev/dvdwriter:
HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Invalid argument