> I've been battling weird problems with my CD-RW drive for months now. > It would work fine for days or weeks or months, then fail in weird ways, > for days or weeks at a stretch.
Sounds like hardware, suppose it could be power. Why not take yourself off to the APC website and size yourself for a UPS? There are formulae and charts to estimate your power consumption. FWIW a pentium III uses about 30 watts (considerably less than my Athlon at 70+). Cooling could be your problem too. Are things better soon after powerup? > > Last time it worked was after installing and compiling 2.4.18 kernel, > (still failed), and then under "ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support", under "IDE, > ATA and ATAPI Block devices", tried the "Use multi mode by default" Yes > option in the kernel, and was suddenly able to blank a disc again and > write a disc. > > Then I tried to write a 2nd one and it failed again, like this: > > Mar 24 16:38:07 posh kernel: SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel 0. > Mar 24 16:38:07 posh kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout : pid 5940, >scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 Test Unit Ready 00 00 00 00 00 > Mar 24 16:38:07 posh kernel: SCSI host 0 abort (pid 5940) timed out - resetting > > Other errors over the months have included: > > o Occasional timeouts on scsi commands. > o scsi errors happening so fast that the generic scsi sub-system > flooded /var/log/messages with errors, unstoppably, which was > slowly filling the disc. Only a reboot would ever stop that > one. > o Generic scsi module lock-ups. > o HDD activity light on permanently, despite no disc activity. > o Kernel crashes. (/sbin/hdparm -d1 -X34 /dev/hdc and > /sbin/hdparm -k1 /dev/hdc helped with this a LOT, but not 100%.) > o Dead CD-RW and DVDROM drives - stone dead. No power even during > boot. > > Some of the PC sysadmins at work said that they thought that my system, > which includes 3 hard disc drives, was under-powered with just a 250W > power supply. > > The store where I bought it said that a simple test (of my apparently > dead Cd-RW and DVDROM), would be to unplug the power from the 3 drives, > and power back up and see if the CD-RW and DVDROM drives got power. I > did that, and they did. (Interestingly, after plugging everything back > together, *everything* is now working again. But I don't knpow how long > it will stay like that.) > > So, it seems that a system with Pentium III 833MHz, CD-RW, DVDROM, > floppy, graphics card, sound card, 4-IDE controller motherboard, 3 > HDDs, is slightly more than can be reliably run from a 250W power > supply. I.e., things will all work if you're lucky, but it's all just > running at the edge of its capabilities, and you can get power on some > busses dropping just enough to make various bits of hardware fail in > weird ways. > > This may even explain why I could never get the system to work when I > plugged in the 4th HDD, and why the problem only seems to be shared by > a few other people on the internet. > > I'll be getting a 350W power supply this week sometime, and crossing my > fingers that this is the real answer. > > luke > > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-scsi" in > the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > -- Cheers John Summerfield Microsoft's most solid OS: http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/ Note: mail delivered to me is deemed to be intended for me, for my disposition. ============================== If you don't like being told you're wrong, be right! -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
