This is an external SCSI CD-RW drive. Is anyone familiar with this
model? Does it work as well as older generation SCSI Plexwriters? Does
it work well with cdrecord? I am thinking of getting one of these as I
am fed up with the POS writer that came with my Dell Optiplex desktop.
It burns CDs Ok, they're readable, but for some reason if those are
either bootable Solaris or Fedora installation CD images, they fail to
boot on certain types of SPARC or PC workstations respectively. I get
all kinds of strage errors (bus errors, etc). What going on? I know
that my images are good (e.g. they work fine for setting up a working
network installation server)


-akop

On Friday 06 August 2004 8:37 pm in comp.sys.sun.hardware Akop Pogosian
wrote:

> This is an external SCSI CD-RW drive. Is anyone familiar with this
> model? Does it work as well as older generation SCSI Plexwriters? Does
> it work well with cdrecord? I am thinking of getting one of these as I
> am fed up with the POS writer that came with my Dell Optiplex desktop.
> It burns CDs Ok, they're readable, but for some reason if those are
> either bootable Solaris or Fedora installation CD images, they fail to
> boot on certain types of SPARC or PC workstations respectively. I get
> all kinds of strage errors (bus errors, etc). What going on? I know
> that my images are good (e.g. they work fine for setting up a working
> network installation server)

Older Sun workstations have old CDROM drives which cannot
read CDRW disks or CDRs written at high speed.
The technology has changed over the years, ISTR that drives
older than 16x may have these problems.

Use CDRs not CDRWs and burn them at 4x speed.

Even better, put your nice shiny new SCSI drive in a SCSI
enclosure and take it to the offending machine.



--
My real address is crn (at) netunix (dot) com
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deleted. Send only plain text.

Chris Newport <me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:
> On Friday 06 August 2004 8:37 pm in comp.sys.sun.hardware Akop Pogosian
> wrote:

>> This is an external SCSI CD-RW drive. Is anyone familiar with this
>> model? Does it work as well as older generation SCSI Plexwriters? Does
>> it work well with cdrecord? I am thinking of getting one of these as I
>> am fed up with the POS writer that came with my Dell Optiplex desktop.
>> It burns CDs Ok, they're readable, but for some reason if those are
>> either bootable Solaris or Fedora installation CD images, they fail to
>> boot on certain types of SPARC or PC workstations respectively. I get
>> all kinds of strage errors (bus errors, etc). What going on? I know
>> that my images are good (e.g. they work fine for setting up a working
>> network installation server)

> Older Sun workstations have old CDROM drives which cannot
> read CDRW disks or CDRs written at high speed.
> The technology has changed over the years, ISTR that drives
> older than 16x may have these problems.

> Use CDRs not CDRWs and burn them at 4x speed.

> Even better, put your nice shiny new SCSI drive in a SCSI
> enclosure and take it to the offending machine.


I have always burned CDR disks at 12x even when the drives support
higher speeds. The ones burned with an older Plextor drive always
worked. The ones burned with the internal drive on my shiny new Dell
Optiplex GX270 often don't work. Is 12x too fast for some drives? How
does it explain that the disks burned with an external Plextor drive
still work under all conditions?

-akop

Akop Pogosian wrote:
> Chris Newport <me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On Friday 06 August 2004 8:37 pm in comp.sys.sun.hardware Akop Pogosian
>>wrote:
>
>
>>>This is an external SCSI CD-RW drive. Is anyone familiar with this
>>>model? Does it work as well as older generation SCSI Plexwriters? Does
>>>it work well with cdrecord? I am thinking of getting one of these as I
>>>am fed up with the POS writer that came with my Dell Optiplex desktop.
>>>It burns CDs Ok, they're readable, but for some reason if those are
>>>either bootable Solaris or Fedora installation CD images, they fail to
>>>boot on certain types of SPARC or PC workstations respectively. I get
>>>all kinds of strage errors (bus errors, etc). What going on? I know
>>>that my images are good (e.g. they work fine for setting up a working
>>>network installation server)
>
>
>>Older Sun workstations have old CDROM drives which cannot
>>read CDRW disks or CDRs written at high speed.
>>The technology has changed over the years, ISTR that drives
>>older than 16x may have these problems.
>
>
>>Use CDRs not CDRWs and burn them at 4x speed.
>
>
>>Even better, put your nice shiny new SCSI drive in a SCSI
>>enclosure and take it to the offending machine.
>
>
>
> I have always burned CDR disks at 12x even when the drives support
> higher speeds. The ones burned with an older Plextor drive always
> worked. The ones burned with the internal drive on my shiny new Dell
> Optiplex GX270 often don't work. Is 12x too fast for some drives? How
> does it explain that the disks burned with an external Plextor drive
> still work under all conditions?
>
> -akop

I don't think I have ever been able to boot from CDRW, even when burned
at 1X :-(

Also, when I was trying to burn a Fedora Core 2 CD, I could not get a
bootable CD with standard cdrw. Using the media checker, it would say
that there was a data error on the CDR around 70% of the way through. I
resorted to Joerg's cdrecord, and even had to use some funky options, as
per the following command line:

# cdrecord -driveropts=burnfree -force -immed dev=2,0
`pwd`/FC2-i386-disc1.iso

You need to check whether all/any of the above options are applicable to
your burner.

That managed to get me a bootable CDR which worked in an old Compaq
166MHz PC.

Probably of little help to you. Apols.....


Beardy.