quote:

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Originally posted by Akinetón

I believe Plextor, they are good quality and have good support people. Seems to me you have an bad SCSI card. But why are you so complaining about this, what is bad of this?

I have not seen more problems with this, so I really think this cause by bug. You should mail the bug and get a new SCSI card.

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First it's a bug in the software (same bug in 3 different programs), now it's a problem with the SCSI card?
How did you come to that conclusion? Do you know something we don't know?

Do you want to know what my SCSI card (Adaptec 29160) is capable of?

Well, I just ran the SCSI Bench on my SCSI HD:
97988 KB/sec

But Plextor does make great products and their support people are usually very capable.
It's just this answer from them which bothers me.
Other than that I really don't care about the burst rate. It must be the least important performance parameter of CD-ROM drives

(in reply to stuartl)

@Graffiti:
It's about the burst transfer rate. You're talking about the normal transfer rate which has never been a problem to measure.
CD Speed shows a transfer rate of 17-40x. There's no way you can get such accurate results with performance monitor.

@Clint:
I just wonder how they got that 13MB/sec.
The Plextor PX-40TS is not MMC compatible and has a very limited command set.
The benchmarks report a very low burst rate with this drive because they read sectors at the beginning of the disc. In theory the number should be 2550 KB/sec (=17x) but since the pickup constantly has to move back and forward the results will be much lower.
And if the Plextor 40x would behave as expected the number would be 18 MB/sec.

Suppose someone wants to test the performance of his IDE 50x drive but without DMA enabled.
The drive will then actually read at 50x but benchmarks will show a much lower value because the system can't process the data fast enough. Can this be called a bug of the benchmark?

The burst rate doesn't really tell much about the performance of a CD-ROM drive. The other numbers are important (ie. transfer rate, seek times).
In its glory days, the Plextor PX-40TS used to be by far the greatest drive but nowadays it gets its butt kicked by many cheap Atapi drives.
Nothing to be ashamed of, it's just showing its age :)

I've heard from various sources that the Yamaha does support C2 (also Nero InfoTool reports this) but I don't know any program that knows how to read them with the Yamaha.
IMO it's up to Yamaha to contact the software makers and tell them how to get C2 information from their drive.

(in reply to stuartl)

mmm.. just to get an clarification. then what is burst rate even good for anyway, and why're we all going gaa gaa all over it not reporting correctly.

BTW, about the Yamaha, CDSpeed 1.0 can now report C2 error, and so can CDR Tools

(in reply to stuartl)

Hi everybody,

It is a while since there is no more message in this topic, but I experience the same problem (one more...)

I do not have any aswer to this, but it seems to me the following : when you look at supported SCSI commands for the Ultraplex40max using SandraSisoft, it seems it does not support "Terminate I/O", whereas my Pioneer DVD304S does.
When you look at "Terminate I/O", the standard says :
" The TERMINATE I/O PROCESS message is sent from the initiator to the target to terminate the current I/O process without corrupting the medium. "
and also :
" ... The TERMINATE I/O PROCESS message provides a means for the initiator to request the target to reduce the transfer length of the current command to the amount that has already been transferred. The initiator can use the sense data to determine the actual number of bytes or blocks that have been transferred. This message is normally used by the initiator to stop a lengthy read, write, or verify operation when a higher-priority command is available to be executed. It is up to the initiator to complete the terminated command at a later time, if required. "

Does it mean Plextor did not implement properly this SCSI-2 command ??

(in reply to stuartl)

Sorry, after checking my other SCSI peripherals, here are the results for the "Terminate I/O" support :
Host 0 (AHA2940U2W)
- Plextor CD-R820T : No support
- Fujitsu M2513E (ID4) : No support
- IOMEGA ZIP100 (ID5) : No support
- IBM DDRS39130D (ID6) : No support
- IBM DNES309170W (ID8) : No support
Host 1 (ASC19160)
- Seagate ST39204LW (ID0) : No support
- Maxtor Atlas 10KIII (ID1) : No support
- Pioneer DVDROM 304 (ID5) : Support !!
- Plextor PX-40TS : No support

So it is a bad idea, but I do not understand why Pioneer DVD has this feature...

(in reply to stuartl)

Dear friends,
I consider that it is important to tell you my experience too. My system consists of :
CPU Pentium II – 266 MHz,
Motherboard QDI P6I440LX Legend V BIOS V2.0SL Jan.5,1999
Memory 512 Mbytes RAM
Display card Diamond Viper 550 TNT + TV out 16 MBytes
TV card Studio PCTV capture card and tuner
Sound card SoundBlaster Life Value + Hoontech digital inputs & outputs

ULTRA ATA 100 CONTROLLER DMA 0649
Hard Disk Matrox 20 Giga Bytes, U/ATA 100, 7200 ppm
Quantum 4 GB U/A 33, 5400 ppm
CD/RW Plextor 24x10x40 (IDE)

SCSI Controller SCSI Asus (Symbios PC875)/UltraWide
CD-ROM Plextor 40x-TS (SCSI)
SCANNERS Acer 620 (SCSI) (flatbed)
Acer Scanwit 2720s (SCSI) (filmscanner)

Monitor ViewSonic GA771

I have the really bad experience with the burst rate tests of the SCSI Plextor PX-40TS. I think that maybe it is my SCSI card that is responsible for this, but it is difficult for me to believe. I used the same test with the Plextor CD/RW 24x10x40, which gave 10 MBytes/sec!!!! Do you think that the SCSI drive needs a new firmware or something like that?
And I think that my SCSI card doesn't syncronize with the drive. And I do not know what kind of settings do I need for the drive and the scanners. The manuals say almost nothing.
The second problem I have it that my system needs 15 minutes since booting to get into Windows 98. The main responsible is the Ultra Ata controller, but can I change this situation?

(in reply to stuartl)

If you have a look on the previous posted message, you'll see that it seems Plextor knows the problem about burst mode with the Ultraplex, but they do not want to communicate on it. It seems burst mode work perfectly with their *own* tools !
So do not worry about your settings, except that in your case, do not forget that if you want to take advantage of Ultra SCSI interface, your scsi chain must not be longer than 1,5m !! Check it, because it could be a reason of bad boot...

(in reply to stuartl)

I would like to tell you sth more.
When the plextor px-40TS had been first released on the stores, it was cheaper from its predecessor px-32ts. I was so impressed then, that I couldn't understand the reason of that. A friend of mine told me that the veterans on CD WRITINGS prefered to get the old one than the new and quicker drive.
Maybe all of you know much better than me. I simbly would like to remind you this fact.

(in reply to stuartl)

I may be a little late on this thread, but anyways...

I had some problems with my Ultraplex 40max and my Adaptec 19160 scsi card. Adaptec released a new driver, complete with instructions to install if you are experiencing slowdown with CD/CD-RW drives.

I installed the new driver and my 40max is back at full speed.

gd16

(in reply to stuartl)