Ron,
Thanks!
Ron Stodden wrote:
> If you are using Mandrake 7.2, be careful that when your IDE CD is in
> use nothing else is happening on the same IDE channel as the CDROM.
> Seems to be fixed in 8.0.
I'm using 7.2 (with MandrakeFreq update). How could I check that? In
my Bios setup I have only the CDRom drive (reader) as the primary device
on the second IDE channel.
> If you have a second CDROM reader, or access to another PC, try again
> in that.
OK, I need to juggle partitions to get enough free space, or "borrow" my
son's machine. (How come he has the latest machine? ;-)
> Make sure that the bottom polycarbonate surface is clean and
> undamaged. Make sure that the top label surface has not been
> damaged in any way (this is where the recording actually is, just
> under the label and very vulnerable).
Everything looks good!
> > Background: I bought some game CDs
>
> Linux games?
No, Windows (for my son).
>
> > and the game fails during one phase
> > of play. The "manufacturer" is about to say that my CDs must be bad (no
> > scratches, no fingerprints, have had the game for 1 1/2 years with the
> > same problem in two different machines). I want to send him the md5
> > checksums and have him tell me whether they are right or wrong (before I
> > consider paying $10 each for replacement disks). (Along with
> > information on how to generate an md5 checksum.)
>
> Yes, do that! But there should be no charge to replace defective
> CDROMs within the warranty period.
Yeah, but we assumed the old computer was the problem and now the
warranty is over. But, it's probably worth a try anyway.
> > PS: Shortly I will probably run some experiments -- burn a CD from an
> > ISO, recreate the ISO from the CD, then compare the checksums, so maybe
> > in a few hours (or days) I'll know the answer.
My first experiments didn't quite work -- on my burner machine running
Windows, the (windows) md5.exe (md5, md5sum, and md51) commands (tried
three) just hang (on a .cif from a different, known good, CD) -- I'm
trying again as I write this. (.cif is the image file for Adaptec Easy
CD Creator -- I don't know whether I can actually make a .iso with
Adaptec -- I'll find out soon, I hope.)
>
> This works here. You don't have to recreate the iso file from the
> CD, you can md5sum directly from /dev/cdrom (unmounted).
Hmm, unmounted? Maybe that's my problem. Nope, just umounted and tried
again. (It might have "automounted" somewhere along the line. Anyway,
I did umount /mnt/cdrom, then umount /dev/cdrom (which gave "not found"
-- prior to umount /mnt/cdrom it gave "device busy"), and then repeated
the md5sum /dev/cdrom -- same result "Input/output error" after ~two
minutes of spinning. (This is with a different (known good) CD.)
Thanks again for your reply!
Randy Kramer
