Appears to work on my 12101B as well - and despite being (apparently) sanyo chipset based (unlike the mediatek "02B" and above) - results at 8x and max were comparable.

Proof of it at least returning sensible, if not 100% accurate results, is in the CHANGE between different media.
A freshly burned CD, of acceptable quality, should turn in low C1 rates and no C2, a CD-RW is likely to be worse, and an audio CD with playing problems should show spikes of C1/C2 off scale!

For practical use, absolute accuracy is not as important as getting a general indication of overrall quality.

(in reply to john)

Two more drive are checked with the CD Doctor:

CenDyne 4824P - does NOT work.
The make is BenQ, FW = D.LC.

Smart and Friendly Mach 12 (SCSI) - works.
Internally, it's Sanyo CRD-RW2, FW = 1.27.
There is some minor issue with this drive (it treats the max speed as 8x while the 8x as 12x) but I'm sure it's associated with how my SCSI card (Adaptec 29160N) treats it, not with the drive itself.

(in reply to john)

Is NOT even recognized by the CD Doctor:
BUSlink USB 2.0 UII-RW40E (reported as CW079D, FW ver. 11JS).

This drive has severe problems with reading at all.

(in reply to john)

What does not work.

Second point. A lot of people say that high speed is not good since it sometimes give backs tons of errors compared to low speed. Still this doesn't mean that high speed measureing isn't accurate. Something different is going on.

(in reply to john)

I pulled off the Sony CRX220E1 drive from my PC where the CD Doctor works fine and installed into my another PC, also running Windows XP Pro. Well, here the CD Doctor immediately exits with the message "Exiting program because no CD-ROM found.". Whatever I tried is to no avail.

The ASPI 4.71.2 is installed if full, including even not required (otherwise the Nero InfoTool complains) Winaspi.dll and Wowpost.exe.

Needless to say, both this drive and a DVD reader are perfectly recognised by the system and any program but the CD Doctor. The Sony drive burns and reads well.

What may be the reason of such the unexpected behavior, please?

(in reply to john)

Try to use WinASPI 4.60 or move WNASPI32.DLL to the CD Doctor folder

(in reply to john)

No, neither way works.

However, if I copy the Nero's version of the WNASPI32.DLL to the CD Doctor directory, it already posts the menu screen and even is able to retrieve the ATIP info. But when I proceed to the actual test, it freezes at spinning-up the drive. In about 10% of the cases, I can kill the program from the "three-finger menu". In the rest, the Win XP can't do a thing. I can run anything else (WEB browser, photo editing program etc.) but not shut the PC down properly.

Of course, the hard disk is checked by CHKDSK. No unnecessary programs load at start-up. The Nero version is 5.5.10.20 (still bugs at least in the DriveSpeed module but CD Speed seems to be better). The system is rock stable (never crashed). In addition, to run the CD Doctor fine on the older PC, no copy of the WNASPI32.DLL is needed at all.

Well, this new PC has the default installation by the Compaq. When I install the OSs and configure it my way, we'll see what happens.

But at this moment I have to temporary give up if there are no other ideas, please...

(in reply to john)

Resolved:

1. I removed the Adaptec ASPI layer altogether.

2. Installed its ver. 4.60 and restarted. Checked ASPI installation with Nero InfoTool. It was cheerful. CD Doctor already ran fine!

3. Installed ver. 4.71.2. Now, even the InfoTool complains about corrupted installation, the CD Doctor runs just fine. Obviously, for it and probably some other programs, even under Windows XP, the Adaptec ASPI layer ver. 4.60 has to be installed anyway, despite the Adaptec themselves state the opposite. Whether installing ver. 4.71.2 on the top of that is now important, I cannot say.

John, thanks for the idea.

(in reply to john)

CD Doctor does not handle AAMQR + DT@2 disks?!
Can this be confirmed? If not, what could be the reason?...

Today I've made a (important) data AAMQR disk with Disk Tattoo (with the Yamaha F1ZE drive in an external USB2/FW enclosure, by the way) and wanted to check it. The Nero CD Speed gave perfect results. The CD Doctor, however, upon correct reporting on its ATIP, immediately exited to a blank results screen, to my total surprise.

This result is 100% reproduceable.

Thereafter, I checked an audio AAMQR disk without a DT@2, and CD Doctor ran just normally.

Next, I've checked a DT@2 regular audio disk. Again, no surprises from the CD Doctor.

What should I think about AAMQR and DT@2 combination? Well, at this time I don't have more testings done.

Has someone seen something similar, please?

(in reply to john)

Confirmed:
I've also checked the CD Doctor on a data AAMQR disk without the DT@2. It does not read it!

(in reply to john)

interesting! would you mind testing out K-Probe to see if it will handle that or not?

You can download it here: http://home.pchome.com.tw/cool/cdtools/

(in reply to john)

Hi Dolphi,
Thanks you appointed me the KProbe. I was busy and out of the forum for a while and missed to notice its release. Anyhow, I've installed this interesting program. The test results turned out to be more than just the initial issue!

First off, I've noticed that the KProbe has reset the Adaptec ASPI layer level from 4.72 to 4.60. Probably no a big deal. Nonetheless, I've run tests with and without restoring the 4.72. No difference!

Second of all, and the most essential for my initial post,... Well, the Sony drive (actually, it's the Litie 52246S) cannot read the data AAMQR disks (neither via Windows Explorer nor via CMD prompt) but has no problems with the audio AAMQR. Resetting the read speed by the Nero Drive Speed to some lower values (even to 8x) does not help any.

No surprise, my two other readers (Hitachi DVD GD-5000 and Yamaha F1ZE hooked up on a FireWire port) read all of them. Too bad for the Lite-On hardware\firmware.

In other words, ability of the CD Doctor to handle the data AAMQR disks depends on the ability of the Sony drive to read them. The same thing - for the KProbe. Unfortunately, my other readers do not quite appropriately support the commands required by those programs.

The surprise is, however, that now I'm not able to reproduce the reading of a data AAMQR disk by the Nero CD Speed?! Here, I have to add some info.

On my PC, I have two Windows XP Pro and one Windows 98 SE configurations. It's a dual boot on a SCSI disk and a single one on an ATA disk (the default OEM WinXP setup), switchable via BIOS. I use Win98 only for auxiliary purposes, so that let's leave it alone.

My initial post is associated with the OEM WinXP. Now, I've checked both of the WinXP configurations, and none reads the data AAMQR via the Sony drive. Why? I don't know yet. However, for some time I have one more rebagged by BUSLink Litie 52246S drive and am going to check on it as well. Not quite soon though: short on time...

The KProbe runs better on my custom WinXP configuration: at least, it does not hang up here, and testing the audio AAMQR disk proceeds without issues. In the OEM configuration, however, it hangs up really hard with the message at the bottom: "VUCmd: Pause On/Off (0)...". Even though the system is usable otherwise but I couldn't find a way to kill the program. Should I drop a note to the author of the KProbe?

So, my conclusion(s) at this time:

1. Audio AAMQR disks are read by the Lite-On firmware just fine. Accordingly, both the CD Doctor and KProbe run Okay.

2. Data AAMQR disks are not read by the only drive in my posession that is supported by both the testing programs. These disks, however, are read fine by my other readers.

3. Disk Tattoo has no impact on the issue.

When I get additional results, I'll post. At this time, I'd need to read on the new KProbe program.

Again, Dolphi, thanks for your message. What do you think about the story?

(in reply to john)

An update:

I gave a shot on the issue under Windows 98 SE ... with some interesting results!

First off, a data AAMQR disk was immediately recognised in the Sony drive - in difference to the WinXP. However, its data (normally read by my two other readers) is reported as a single audio track?!?!

The Nero CD Speed has scanned the disk surface Okay, no problem. However, it refused to run any other tests with the message "Read Error!". The read speed was 52x.

The real surprise was that the K-Probe (ASPI=4.60) did run C1/C2 error test and came up with some reasonable level of C1 only errors.

The CD Doctor, however, skipped reading the disk altogether and ended up in a blank screen. Meaning, the K-Probe seems to be a more powerful and better done tool.

All the programs, however, have properly reported the ATIP info.

Now, I'll think whatever I want... before accumulating more information.

It turns out that the Windows 98 SE is better than the M$ tries to convict us. At least, my area of the "auxiliary" tasks performed under Win98 has expanded...

(in reply to john)

Sambs0: Wow! that's some excellent reporting on your findings! thankyou very much for your efforts. Yes I think you should inform the author of K-Probe of what you have discovered, he is monitoring this thread: http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=10234 in the CDRLabs forum, and I'm sure he'll be interested in your findings! Also, it may result in a new firmware release for LiteON drives for better support of Yamaha's AAMQR discs since he works for LiteON's IT department. If you want I can give him the address to this topic as I am already involved in the testing of his software, but as you did this research, I think it would be best if you reported it to him

Once again, great work!!

(in reply to john)

Dolphi,
Thanks a lot for your kind and assurable words!

I ran briefly through the first and last pages of the thread on the CDRLabs forum you direct to. To post there, I'd have to carefully read everything already posted. But I desperately have no spare time for that...

I did send an E-Mail to Mr. Carr Wang in a hope this info may be of use to him. Some essential notes, however.

First off, the AAMQR disks are definitely not of high importance for a Lite-On specific tool. Indeed, how many of us are going to use such disks on the Lite-On readers?!
On the other hand, problems with such the disks are a bad sign for the hardware\firmware. Possibly the appropriate Lite-On team will catch it. This issue also may signify some more essential problems. If not in this drive, in some future hardware releases this can be addressed.

Secondly, the issue very likely is a hardware (BIOS\motherboard) specific. As far as I can recall, on my older PC (it's been sold), supporting the IDE CD-ROM drives was implemented better, and the Sony drive used to read data AAMQR disks without problems. That machine had High-Point Tech ATA-100 controller while my new one comes with a Compaq proprietary BIOS and ATA-100 support...
Now, is it that simple to cover a wide variety of the ATA interfaces for a program aiming to supporting just (some of) Lite-On drives only? I don't think so.

Finally, Windows 98 SE these days is not an index! How many modern PCs still run it? At least, the Compaq does not support it on my machine. Installing the Win 98 SE turned out to be a real nightmare, believe me.
Though, possibly my reports may give some clues to the author of the K-Probe... At least, I hope so.

"If you want I can give him the address to this topic as I am already involved in the testing of his software..."
I'd be appreciated if you do, really.

"...but as you did this research, I think it would be best if you reported it to him"
This does not matter. I've already said, also in the mailing to Mr. Wang, all what I have up to the moment.

(in reply to john)

Okay, I'll make a pointer to this topic then

I agree that the problems with the AAMQR is not a big issue in itself, but it may be a syptom of a larger problem, and in my opinion should be looked into, at least a little bit. So we'll see what can be done

(in reply to john)