A few weeks ago, I installed a NEC1100, but returned it after a weekend of
sundry STOP/BSOD messages when burning DVD's with Nero (or other apps).

I decided to try again, and got a Pioneer 105 at a good price, but yet again
every time I tried a burn, I got a BSOD, or other lockout. After
researching this in detail, looking at minidumps, and trying many many
things to resolve it, I hit on one that worked.... If I set my secondary
IDE channel in Device Manager for device 0 (it's set as master) to be PIO
and not DMA, the burn was OK. Well it's worked three times now .

I'm keen to understand why this is; whether anyone else has had to do the
same, and also what the implications/limitations of this are?

One I fear could be that for burning DVD-RW's (using Prinz discs), I only
get a 1x speed burn option.
Also burning one DVD-R (Prinz again), though it presented me with 1x, 2x,
and 4x options, it went straight into burning at 1x. That's annoying....!

Even more annoying is that my DVD-ROM won't seem to read these discs burnt.
It spins fast/slow, makes various noises, and sound awful. It also did the
same too often with CD-R;s burnt in my previous cd-writer. Is it likely
to be faulty, or is this the setup again?

My system is setup as follows:
AMD 1ghz
Gigabyte GA7ZXR v2.2 with VIA chipset
384mb mem
Nvidia GTS2 graphics
Win XP Pro
2x HD's on Primary Channel
DVD-R/RW as master on Secondary, and DVD-ROM as slave on secondary
2 x HD's on mainboard promise controller

--
regards,
Neil

Via chipset! That pretty much explains your problems.
Try updating chipset drivers. They may or may not
solve your problem.

"Neil" <ncpsm@mail.com> wrote in message
news:bdaios$qurv5$1@ID-15081.news.dfncis.de...

Actually that does not explain the problem. My system is a dual AMD (motherboard
Asus A7M266-D) with the AMD 760 MPX chipset.
I have a similar problem. My DVD burner (Philips DVDRW208K) is connected as
secondary master.
Windows almost totally freezes up under Win2K and WinXP (have tried both) when
formatting a DVD+RW if the burner is operating in any DMA level (0, 1 or 2),
however burning an already formatted DVD+RW in any DMA level works flawlessly
(PIO always works with all operations).
So what I had to do was to format all my DVD+RWs when the burner was configured
in PIO-mode and then I switched it back to DMA mode. This works fine for me.
I have an open case handled by AMD on this. The information provided is
generally what is said in this thread and:
The fact that is is independent of whether run on Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
It happens all the time (reproducible).
Windows does NOT freeze up completely, the mouse pointer may still be moved, but
once any mouse button is clicked not even the mouse will move any more. This
indicates that the Windows kernel still (at least for one of my processors) is
serving interrupts.
I have debugged the Windows kernel (from remote) and found that when Windows is
in this "frozen-up state", one of the CPUs (on a dual CPU system) is idle,
however the interrupt handlng services in Windows are already occupied by a
third party driver/library. Since I do not have the source code for this
library, I have been unable to debug the matter much further.

Unfortunately, there has been very little response from AMD lately, I am
beginning to suspect that they are trying to get rid of the problem by ignoring
it.

-I know that this does not help, but you should know that you are not alone!

/ Regards, Peter

Nobody_of_Consequence wrote:

--
__________________________________________________ __________
Peter Johansson Phone : +46 (0)8 752 81 00
Contactor Data AB Mobile: +46 (0)70 608 3063
Finlandsgatan 14 MailTo:Peter.Johansson@contactor.se
164 74 Kista SMS :Peter.Johansson.sms@contactor.se
SWEDEN

Interesting....

(I had tried using the latest VIA drivers, and that hadn't helped).

Yes, in most instances I was trying to burn a DVD+RW (with the previous
writer), or a DVD-RW with the new one. I just couldn't afford to create
coasters at £1 a time.

Do you think burning DVD-R's with DMA on would be OK, and that it's just
RW's that need PIO set?

I'm still not clear on the impact of using PIO versus DMA anyway. Slower?

Neil

Your Asus mb uses Via southbridge (io control).
When you dl Via's drivers upgrade everything except the
agp driver. Search Amd's site for agp updates.

"Peter Johansson" <Peter.Johansson@uab.ericsson.se> wrote in message
news:3EFACEBF.C27D2441@uab.ericsson.se...

Neil wrote:
OK, here goes...
Communicating with any device such as the HD/CD/DVD may be done using
PIO (1, 2, 3 or 4) or DMA (0, 1, 2...) where higher lvl DMA is usually
also called UDMA or Ultra DMA.
The main difference between PIO (Programmable Input Outout) and DMA
(Direct Memory Access) is that when using PIO, the computer's CPU is
involved in the operation at all times. When using DMA on the other
hand, there is (at least one) DMA controller (hardware) that handles the
transfer instead of the CPU, hence the same operation towards a device
using PIO or DMA could in the worst case differ from CPU usage of near
100% (PIO) to near 0% (DMA). Hence using DMA to communicate with the
devices makes it possible to use the computer for other tasks in the
meanwhile without having to wait (that much) for the data transfer to
complete.

Whether or not it would be possible for you to burn DVD-Rs with DMA
enabled is for you to find out. As far as I have learned, this problem
is not (unfortunately) seen by all users although same chipsets and
operating systems are being used.

So try it out, if you are lucky, it might work. Otherwise your stuck
with PIO (like me) or buying a new machine :-(

/ Peter

"NoSpamNews" <Peter.Johansson.n.o@s.p.a.m.contactor.se> wrote in message
news:ECVKa.13737$mU6.14687@newsb.telia.net...
Sorry, I just realized that I might have misunderstood your last "Slower?".
I thought you wanted a more thorough explanation, but now I realize that you
just might want to know if PIO is slower than DMA.
Generally (today) PIO and DMA are equally fast if the CPU is powerful
enough. Usually the DMA engine is designed on a per device basis, hence the
DMA controller for the DVD-burner is capable of feeding the burner with the
maximum data rate it can handle. Hence, DMA is always the better option
(unless the system freezes of course).
If the CPU is not fast enough then DMA is faster, but PIO is generally never
faster than DMA (unless you bought a device that has a DMA controller that
is badly proportioned in relation to the maximum data rate of your device).

Hope I answered your question this time.

/ Peter

questions well.
cheers
Neil

"NoSpamNews" <Peter.Johansson.n.o@s.p.a.m.contactor.se> wrote in message
news:TUVKa.13741$mU6.15109@newsb.telia.net...
I agree with your statment about the CPU speed verses DMA speed. Sony just
needs to check operation with different hardware and then work the bugs out!