[vox-tech] DVD issues

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Wed 11 Aug 04, 11:00 AM, dylan <dylan at iici.no-ip.org> said:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I was recently messing about with DVD playback on linux, and was less than
> impressed with the quality- i.e. playback was at about 75% speed. after some
> googling i came to the conclusion that I had 2 options: 1 get a better video
> card  or 2, fix the DMA settings on the drive with hdparm... (the xv
> extension to X11 was already installed)
> 
> 
> the initial output from hdparm was as follows:
> linux:/var/log # hdparm /dev/dvd
> ---------------------
> /dev/dvd: 
>  HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Invalid argument
>  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
>  unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
>  using_dma    =  0 (off)
>  keepsettings =  0 (off)
>  readonly     =  1 (on)
>  readahead    = 256 (on)
>  HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument
> ---------------------
> 
> i tried a couple of combinations of turning on DMA, as well as toggling the
> other settings. Any setting other than the default lead to a non-functioning
> DVD drive, and the following lines in /var/log/messages:
> ---------------------
> Aug 10 22:40:00 linux kernel: hdd: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady
> SeekComplete Error }
> Aug 10 22:40:00 linux kernel: hdd: drive_cmd: error=0x04Aborted Command
> ---------------------
> 
> I have ordered a new video card for this machine, as the integrated video is
> awful. perhaps this will solve my problems. however, is it normal for a
> modern DVD drive like this one refuse to accept DMA transfers?
> 
> 
> any ideas?
> 
> thanks in advance!
> 
> Dylan

Dylan, are you getting DMA on *any* of your hard drives?  In kernels
2.6, you need to look at these settings:

   Device Drivers | ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support

Do you see where it says things like "X support"?  You need to find the
correct IDE chipset for your motherboard and enable it.

If you're using a distro supplied kernel, I'm surprised it's not being
loaded.  Look in dmesg and try to find error messages related to the IDE
system or with words like PIO and UDMA.  Try to load the relevent module
by hand and see if there are any error messages.

I would be suprised if you had DMA on any of your drives if it's not
working on your DVD drive.

I'm assumming your DVD drive is IDE/ATAPI.

Pete

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