Re: [TCLUG:13992] CDROM Freezing machine (was: [TCLUG:13979] bootupmessages)

["Kevin R. Bullock" <kbullock@ringworld.org>]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, Yaron wrote:

> Whenever I do an extended read from the CDROM, like running cdparanoia to
> grab the entire CD... my machine freezes completly. Have to
> hard-reset. This happens whether I'm on raw ATAPI more or in SCSI
> Emulation mode. I thought it was because the CDROM was reading and the HDD
> it was writing to were on the same IDE channel, but I've moved it to IDE1
> and it still happens. I don't know if this means a flaky CDROM drive or a
> flaky IDE motherboard. Can anyone offer any insight?

I was having a similar problem with a cheap-ass 36x CDROM with my Asus P5A
motherboard. The drive works fine on the Tyan socket 7 board I've got it
on now, but on the Asus board it had similar problems to what you
describe. Does your machine read a little bit, then stall for 5 or 10
minutes, then read a little more, then stall again, ... ? I haven't yet
figured out why it wouldn't work, but my suspicion is that the ALi chipset
on the Asus motherboard is just crap. (This suspicion has been confirmed
by a similar case of flakiness with a Samsung 2.1G HD.)

Kevin R. Bullock