tiplet for enthusiasts--cables and CD-ROM, CD-RW, and DVDs and DVD burners
Straight_Man
Geeky, in my own wayNaples, FL Icrontian
Technically, older CD-ROMS(almost all) and RWs(all except for a very few that NATIVELY burn at 48X) were not ever hardwired or firmwared to handle 80 conductor cables. Some of the latest DVD burners, and some real fast DVD readers CAN handle an 80 conductor cable. If you have or can get spec sheets that say teh device is an MMC3 device, you can try it for a short time on an 80-conductor cable, and try burning from an ISO made to HD. You might get great times when the device is in overspeed mode for bruning, and might get better throughput for games on a 12X DVD reader or faster.
But, if you have an older CD-ROM drive, you can destroy it by hooking it to an 80 conductor cable on a modern mobo for a long time. Most CD-RWs will not be stable on an 80 conductor cable. use the older 40 conductor cable for those, but your HDs of modern sorts WANT an 80 conductor cable. Also, do not stick a modern DVD and an older CD-ROM on same cable, either with older cable the DVD will read hyper slow or your CD-ROm will DIE in a month or two when hooked to newer cable, if it does not die sooner.
Leave a laser onj too long, thing overheats inside, and dies of laser generated heat, or in some cases melts a plastic focus lense over laser gen output first,and then it cannot read data.
Why, well, the controller uses signals on the extra conductors to determine in part the rate at whihc data should flow to that cable. spurious signals from devices not able to handle extra condcutors gen signals on tham they get echoed with the conductors paired with each othr, and the 80 condcutor cable has 2 lines of conduction per pin. Devices that know how to use 80 conductor cables parse two signal streams per EIDE pin. Possible to get, when a device not intended for 80 conductor cable, the following symptoms:
No boot due to device or controller being confused, with or without a system alarm or LED indicator that boot\post is hung.
Misidentification of rate to be used by controller, device death due to heat or laser lense BURN-THROUGH, and no-boots or locks of O\S or drivers that mysteriously vanish and sometimes will not reinstall as lense gets more and more damaged by too much laser-on time per run minute.
Keep CD-ROMs off 80 conductor cables, and keep any inexpensive burner off them also.
Here is something that actually relates but seems to be an O\S issue. One of the Linuxes was destroying LG Electroics burner mechs. why??? Laser insensity was not parsed as Linux parsed it in in the device firmware. The silly things had polycarbonate plastic lenses. LG electronics started getting HUNDREDS of Warranty RMAs and finally redid the firmware, and linux kernel was patched to match firmware when the new revised firmware source code became available. But, if controller talks to firmware in burner wrong, same mess, If signals get confused, guess what can happen?? Same DANG THING-- devices die!!!
BUT, the preventive fix can be as simple as the right kind of cable for the device with certain hardware combos.... Guess what, in the case of the LG burner vs. Linux thing, some of the LG-Electronics devices lived-- those that were on 40 conductor cables and used certain burning software that limited the speed and burn intensity they could burn at to lower than rated by a whole bunch. Bottom line hardware-side answer to problem: HEAT damage caused the deaths, match heat output max to limits of device, many fewer device deaths. The funniest thing about this, was that the LGs with updated firmware also lasted longer in Windows boxes. Go figure!
John--with a side note, kinda similar in idea-- sometimes, human vision defects can relate to retinal tissue tears or holes due to pressure in eyeball(or a stray laser beam turned on for too long or at too high an intensity) causing things like amoeboid floaters and parts of vison out of focus, and if not fixed, a retina can be detactched by fluid working in under where it joins surrounding tissue. FIX in this case, is specialty laser with very tight freq control, carefully aimed and triggered in bursts. How do I know this??? Just had a retinal tissue hole repaired 4 days ago, right eye and patient are doing fine, and the laser dissolved the protein causing the amoeboids floating in vison also, about 90% of them. Very good retinal specialist fixed and found hole, Opthamologist referred me to retinal specialist when he saw floaters and I described symptoms that started Christmas Eve morning. In my case, was pressure and a weak place in retinal tissue that holds the clear gel-like stuff inside eyeball.
But, if you have an older CD-ROM drive, you can destroy it by hooking it to an 80 conductor cable on a modern mobo for a long time. Most CD-RWs will not be stable on an 80 conductor cable. use the older 40 conductor cable for those, but your HDs of modern sorts WANT an 80 conductor cable. Also, do not stick a modern DVD and an older CD-ROM on same cable, either with older cable the DVD will read hyper slow or your CD-ROm will DIE in a month or two when hooked to newer cable, if it does not die sooner.
Leave a laser onj too long, thing overheats inside, and dies of laser generated heat, or in some cases melts a plastic focus lense over laser gen output first,and then it cannot read data.
Why, well, the controller uses signals on the extra conductors to determine in part the rate at whihc data should flow to that cable. spurious signals from devices not able to handle extra condcutors gen signals on tham they get echoed with the conductors paired with each othr, and the 80 condcutor cable has 2 lines of conduction per pin. Devices that know how to use 80 conductor cables parse two signal streams per EIDE pin. Possible to get, when a device not intended for 80 conductor cable, the following symptoms:
No boot due to device or controller being confused, with or without a system alarm or LED indicator that boot\post is hung.
Misidentification of rate to be used by controller, device death due to heat or laser lense BURN-THROUGH, and no-boots or locks of O\S or drivers that mysteriously vanish and sometimes will not reinstall as lense gets more and more damaged by too much laser-on time per run minute.
Keep CD-ROMs off 80 conductor cables, and keep any inexpensive burner off them also.
Here is something that actually relates but seems to be an O\S issue. One of the Linuxes was destroying LG Electroics burner mechs. why??? Laser insensity was not parsed as Linux parsed it in in the device firmware. The silly things had polycarbonate plastic lenses. LG electronics started getting HUNDREDS of Warranty RMAs and finally redid the firmware, and linux kernel was patched to match firmware when the new revised firmware source code became available. But, if controller talks to firmware in burner wrong, same mess, If signals get confused, guess what can happen?? Same DANG THING-- devices die!!!
BUT, the preventive fix can be as simple as the right kind of cable for the device with certain hardware combos.... Guess what, in the case of the LG burner vs. Linux thing, some of the LG-Electronics devices lived-- those that were on 40 conductor cables and used certain burning software that limited the speed and burn intensity they could burn at to lower than rated by a whole bunch. Bottom line hardware-side answer to problem: HEAT damage caused the deaths, match heat output max to limits of device, many fewer device deaths. The funniest thing about this, was that the LGs with updated firmware also lasted longer in Windows boxes. Go figure!
John--with a side note, kinda similar in idea-- sometimes, human vision defects can relate to retinal tissue tears or holes due to pressure in eyeball(or a stray laser beam turned on for too long or at too high an intensity) causing things like amoeboid floaters and parts of vison out of focus, and if not fixed, a retina can be detactched by fluid working in under where it joins surrounding tissue. FIX in this case, is specialty laser with very tight freq control, carefully aimed and triggered in bursts. How do I know this??? Just had a retinal tissue hole repaired 4 days ago, right eye and patient are doing fine, and the laser dissolved the protein causing the amoeboids floating in vison also, about 90% of them. Very good retinal specialist fixed and found hole, Opthamologist referred me to retinal specialist when he saw floaters and I described symptoms that started Christmas Eve morning. In my case, was pressure and a weak place in retinal tissue that holds the clear gel-like stuff inside eyeball.
0
Comments
sorry, that was a long post, but good info
Bull****. ATA specification. The 80 pin ATA100/133 cables are backwards compatible down through ATA33.
All of them can.
Irrelevant.
Bull****. You can't.
Bull****. Untrue.
No need to use anything but 80 pin.
Bull****. Devices can independently claim ATA speed on IDE connections. You're quoting SCSI technology at us. The drives will not die either.
Yeah.. This doesn't happen either.
Blah blah blah.. Bull****. 80 pin cables work fine.
Systems using the ATA specs.... All of them... Boot without a controller present. Bull**** again.
Bull****, more bull****.
Again, no need.
Why do I think this is bull**** too? Laser intensity is controlled by the device electronics and firmware, system BIOS and ATA controller. It has nothing to do with the operating system overlaying those. There is no misparsing.
Ho ho.. More bull****. No 40 pin cable needed. OSes don't control laser intensity. It's firmware locked.
Stop posting crap that's not true. Research before you post. And tiplet isn't a word.
Regards,
The Pedantic ******* Who Hates FUD
What's FUD?
With that said, I've been using nothing but 80pin ribbons for years with all variety of servers, workstations, and desktops-- old and new.. I've NEVER burned up an optical drive period. Even old 2x and 4x readers installing windows xp, etc.
As it turned out, I decided not to try and adapt a round cable not because of the extra grounds issue, but because the wire gauge in 80-pin cables is narrower than that of 40-pin cables and I have no idea how much current Creative passes on that cable and didn't want to set fire to my nice, expensive sound card.
-drasnor
WILL WE EVAR KNWO!? :woowoo:
/me goes off to chop 80 wire IDE cables for answers
And further down:
And on this page:
The LG issue has nothing to do with heat or being on 40- or 80-wire cables. It is related to a single Linux distro and a single misinterpreted command on a handful of LG CD-ROMs. Where did you get the information about how many survived because they were on 40-wire cables??? No information I found could corroborate your outlandish claim. Who would report such statistics??? And don't you think that if cabling had something to do with it that Mandrake and LG would want their customers to know that? I think that those companies would be committing grave injustice by not reporting what your crack investigation has uncovered.
Hey park have you chopped them cables yet. If so what did you find
EO
Well, I decided to be a bit more civil than just chopping away. I removed the back of the 40 pin connected, and found exactly what Mr. Kwitko posted, ALL 80 WIRES "CONNECTED" (to who knows what).
I wanted more. I wanted to know what went to what, and why. It was 2 AM.. so I couldn't do any too grand. I dug out some speaker wirer, took a strand off, and twisted it so it wasn't so weak. Then, i stuck it in one of the holes in the connecter (the 1st one). Using a AAA battery and a multimeter, I found that only 1 of the 80 wires in the back conducted the 1.5 V.
Thus, Seth is 110% correct.
Major source was experience, hands-on(more than 100 times replicated), and physically looking at drives connected in the ways I have said not to connect and the drives connected in ways I say TO connect. Probelm is, with an 80 conductor, you get each pin with two wires, and without live monitoring the cable with the controller and drive active you cannot see the data flow signals. Controllers are compatible with both types of cable, but a drive that does not understand the cable will be simply confused by signals it is not wired to handle. Older firmware is not coded for what did not exist when the firmware was done.
Google the pinouts for the 80 conductor cable, and study the cable standards, for starters. Most of teh cables, as you have noted, are signal dynamic, but simply misunderstanding signals if both ends of cable do not understand the signals the same way causes lasers to run too long,sometimes with repeated read requests. I tried a TDK burner on an 80 conductor, the upper 1\3 of its range was overspeed. I could only burn with the drive in overspeed on the 80 conductor, relaibly, using same media that gened coasters in normal mode. Same burner, 10 mobos. Answer was signal confusion.
I took a 44X creative CD-ROM, got no boots on 10 boards with an 80 conductor cable hooked to it on 5 boards, different ages and mfrs and chipsets, including an MSI KT4VL and a Soyo Firedragon. BUT, both the TDK and the Creative work fine on a 40 conductor on the MSI KT4VL. SAME physical cables usd, and cables were tested beforehand in boxes. BOTH drives are in service now, on a 40 conductor cable, and have been so on both motherbaords for extended lengths of time otalling a year or more, and the Creative came in used and ion fact was a salvaged device from an old tradein. One box has a 36X that also was salvaged, same thing happened, on both boards and on others.
The LG thing is addressed by Mandrakesoft in docs for a kernel patch for Mandrake 9.2. See Mandrake's site, and the dev email lists, which are also archived. Linux Today did a few writeups over time on the problem as evidence developed. Linux journal had some notes about the issue also, which related to Kernel 2.4.10 and down. base issue was that the controller firmware on many chipsets was using MMC2 standards, firmware in the affected LG Electronics mechs did NOT use same intensity table, and a normal burn rate and intensity for half the media available for Cds, grade A- and down, caused the lasers to run so hot that holes were burned through the polycarbinate lenses on those drives. Frimware patch, with less intense values that conformed to MMc2 signals, fixed issue.
I lived through and worked through the times when 40 conductor IDE cables were new things, and worked through boxes that had misconnected drives. I have looked in inactive HP and TDK and LG drives that had FOGGED or burnt-through lenses-- these drives did not have dirty lenses, CD lense cleaning CDs did not help here.
NOTE, I try to share the things that are making me money by fixing where others simply did not know to even guess this might be an issue.
Observation combined with detailed knowledge of standards and pinouts is what led to this, over decades of time.
Essentially if laser stays on too long, or cycles on and off two much, heat builds up inside mech as the devices I talked about are in a low air flow volume area of cases typically and also they are air sealed more than other devices simply to keep dust from getting batweeen laser and media. Windows drivers try to repeatedly seek(and drive with working firmware will turn on laser at each seek, and laser will fire each time) before they "failout" so a drive that has a fogged lense is like an eye with a cataract in it-- blurring, inability to finely distinguish details, bad data results or human or drive cannot see right.
IEEE wrote teh cable and firmware hardware-side standards for MMC3 such that it allowed for UDMA 66 speeds. The controllers were given a propensity to detect signals on lines not used by the 40 conductor signalling specs and of certain types, and then expect a UDMA 66 or faster rate to be accepted by connected device. when you take an old CD-ROM or most CD-RWs and hook to the 80 conductor, seeks that happen too often occur, as the seek and repsonse rate is expected to be faster than the device is rated for.
WD Hds in fact use a cable type detect to tell if they should run as UDMA 33 and down or UDMA 66 speed and up. They work on boht cables, and with many ages of computers, and internal seek time does nto vary,only the rate and signal sets used to send data to mobo. Most CD-RWs are running at same rate as a UDMA at 33 MHz at best, and most CD-ROMS run at 16 MHz top end or slower. They do not have in firmware the ability to sense 80 conductor cable much less the signal tables duality to talk at the signals generated by the modern cable detect controllers.
Curiously, the older CD-ROMS last longer as they have glass lenses, some of the modern ones have lenses that fog over time as they are polycarb lenses. My new eyeglasses are polycarb lensed,and those lenses meet OSHA safety glass standards for things techs might run into and are 1\4 as heavy as even the light-glass Bosch and Lomb lense I had in my last pair of glasses. If you get a pair of light feeling safety glasses, they are likely to be polycarb plastic these days. It is impact resistant, does not scratch easily at all, and does nto discolor due to heat easily. BUT, it can crystalize under heat, and the crystals then form a cloud effect adn the glasses get harder and harder to see clearly through. Folks who work in steel works use glass lenses, not polycarb, in their safety glasses. Why??? More heat, LOTS more.
That is the basic logic, if you want more you can PM me and I will either put up an article on my domain or answer detailed questions with links, some of which you cannot get to unless you are either an IEEE or an IEEE computer society member without paying to see them. Scott Meuller talks about some of these things, in the 13th, 14th, and 15th edition of his Upgrading and Repairing PCs, which is published under the Que publishing label.
John.
Um, simple explanation: bad cable.
I posted a link to the MDK 9.2 errata which states:
A problem with LG CD-ROM drives was discovered that the kernel shipped with Mandrake Linux 9.2 triggered. This problem was that the kernel would send a FLUSH_CACHE command to the LG CD-ROM drive which would make the drive inoperable by overwriting its firmware.
Nothing there references CD-RWs and nothing there mentions cables as an issue. The only thing mentioned is a misinterpreted command.
Did you bother to read the note posted in BRIGHT BLUE LETTERS? I'll help you out. It's the one that reads: NOTE: Based on information we have received from LG Electronics' technicians, only CD-ROM models are affected by this bug. DVD-ROM/R/RW and CD-RW devices are not affected.
I don't know but 80 wire connectors have been the standard for several years now. If you look at every computer built by a major manufacture in the last 4 or 5 years you'll see CD-Rom drives (and burners) all connected with 80 wire ribbion cables, all of them warrantied.
After reading your post and having some small experience in signal transmition I can say that I think trying to use 40 wire cables on todays drives is bad advice.
Even though the extra wire may not actually carry a signal as stated in an earlier post they serve as a way to reduce signal interfearence.
I seems pretty highly unlikely to me that you could get "signal confusion" especially in todays electronics and circuit designes. The only reason that you might have been getting "signal confusion" is because you were sending the wrong signal on the wrong wire to the board.
You have to remember that if the manufactures doubled their wire out, even if they did not at first make changes, over the last few years they have figured out how to make use of those 80 wires to get better performance from the drives that the older 40 wire cables not do.
I suppose that I have never actually conducted a scientific test on your claim but just in the little bit that I do know and understand I really think that this post is bad advice for people and will only confuse those people that don't know any better.
I think that this should go to the debate thread or some where far far away from the possible noob that might see this.
My $.02,
"g"
[Edited to cover up my own stupidity]
It is just so obserd to think that if some one is having CD-rom trouble that you would think that its an 80 vs 40 wire thing.
If you think about it, the real beauty of todays hardware and software is that for the knowledgeable computer geek, if something is happening to a system you can quickly figure out if its hardware or software. If its hardware then its likely to be the actual hardware and not some stupid cable. Sure you can try swapping a cable as a first attempt but if it still doesn't work then its more likely the drive is toast and not because you used an 80 pin connector which is sending "signal confusion" to the board.
It's sending confusing signals cause its BROKEN...
Wow, I'm sure that your a great guy, but for some reason I'm all fired up about this...
I mean no offence but I think you are way off on this one...
[Edited to cover up my own stupidity]
So what, it was heat causation illustration using specific example. The other devices use glass lenses, not polycarb lenses. Thus, the lenses stand up to heat only 4X better.
John.
John, you're talking about 2 completely different things. First, what you're talking about has nothing to do with anything. Second, what you're talking about has nothing to do with anything. Third, the problem with the LG CD-ROMs was with- and I can't stress this enough- JUST CD-ROMs AND NOT CD-R/RW AND/OR DVD-ROM/R/RW ETC., ETC., ETC..
I am not gonna write a book, and am tempted to have this thread purged.
John.
The LG Electronics drives had nothing to do with heat, laser frequency, laser time, cables, or anything of the sort.
It was simply a Mandrakesoft error where the drive's firmware was overwritten with an improper command by the operating system.
Let me repeat that; it had nothing to do with-
-Drive age
-Heat
-Laser time
-Laser frequency
-Cables
And there's no such thing as a reflective determination either.
I don't know, the amount of difference in heat that you're talking about seems pretty weak to me.
Are you suggesting that if you took a 40 wire connector and compaired it to an 80 pin connector that you get more heat in the 80 wire because of faster data rates?
I never studied this as much as you so forgive me but is the gauge of the 40 wire the same as the 80 wire? (retorical question, I really don't want to know) my point is, I can't beleive that some engineer didn't/hasen't taken into account the faster data rates and designed in a way of dealing with the extra heat that might be generated.
As for "older" if backwords compatibility is supported in a peice of hardware then I would imagine that it would be able to handle any heat or situation that you are talking about.
Guess this is getting over my head, I'll sit back and watch now...
However, here are the pinouts:
<PRE>
IDE Hard Disk Interface IDC-40 Male
pin assignment pin assignment
1 -Reset 2 GND
3 Data 7 4 Data 8
5 Data 6 6 Data 9
7 Data 5 8 Data 10
9 Data 4 10 Data 11
11 Data 3 12 Data 12
13 Data 2 14 Data 13
15 Data 1 16 Data 14
17 Data 0 18 Data 15
19 GND 20 Key
21 (reserved) 22 GND
23 -IOW 24 GND
25 -IOR 26 GND
27 IO Chrdy 28 Ale
29 (reserved) 30 GND
31 IRQ14 32 -IOCS16
33 Addr 1 34 (reserved)
35 Addr 0 36 Addr 2
37 -CS0 (1F0-1F7) 38 -CS1 (3f6-3f7)
39 -Active 40 GND
</PRE>
The extra 40 wires are used as grounds. They're just there to maintain signal integrity. THEY HAVE NO EFFECT ON ANYTHING.
I have worked on HP Pavillions made in 2002 with HP DVD\CD-RW combo drives that only work when used with used with 40 conductor cables. The drives that come with 80 conductors are typically MMC3 drives. They can run at 66 MHz data flow. The TDK burner was an MMC2 drive, the HP drives were bulk bought and private labelled for HP and were NOT MMC3 compatible.
Most CD-ROMs on the market, are drives that were base designed in 2000 or earlier. Those are very likely to be MMC2 or MMC (which was used instead of what could be called MMC 1 now) drives.
Machines can lock at post if IDE controller locks, and on modern boards that circuit can be in a bridge. At best, the POST LEDs or voice response will show an error related to a bridge lock. that cascaded error progression series was what happened when I got POST locks that a cable type change fixed instantly. HUNDREDS of times.
Oh, LG Electronics used to be GoldStar.... A lot of the better LG Electronics labelled DVDs are made by majors for LG with private labelling, and not built in LGs mfring facilities.
John-- who will stop sharing many years of hands-on and pattern research analysis-- this is not the place, people flame based on publicly available and WRONG details or omissions due to focus too much here, instead of asking WHY.
Does that mean that all computers need to have a CD, a Zip, and a hard drive with the drives in that configuration? NO. It means that the IBM is fickle.
This is what you're describing with that HP burner. It's fickle. So what? That doesn't mean that what applies to it applies to other optical drives.
I, for one, cannot stand by and let people post stuff that I know is not true without challenging it. People read this site that are not as experienced as we are, and they may take those statements as fact, even though they are not true. I will not let that happen if I can help it. And this time John, you are just plain wrong. Everyone makes incorrect statements or does things incorrectly once in a while, you know. You're no exception to that, regardless of how much experience you have. And all we're saying is that in this instance, you're not right.