224 buffer underruns prevented with Burn-Proof!! --I HAVE A THEORY-- Please read

[TechKnight]

I'm beginning to give up on this system. After much monetary investment, it's still a POS. Here's the specs:

Dual Pentium III 500Mhz Katmai Slot 1 Processors
IWill DBS100 Dual Pentium II/III Motherboard
1GB Crucial PC100 SDRAM (256MB x 4)
Seagate Cheetah 10K RPM 9.1GB SCSI Hard Drive (68pin)
4 x Iomega (rebadged plextors) 12x10x32 CDRW Drives
Windows 2000
C-Media 4.1 PCI Sound Card
Creative TNT2 32MB AGP
3com PCI Ethernet Card
Promise PCI Ultra 66 Controller Card

I've been trying to build a multiple CD duplication system from this machine. I don't know if it's the processors and I don't know if it's some sort of settings. I use Padus Disc Juggler and Nero 5.5.7.8 to run these CD-RW drives. Here's the problem:

On Disc Juggler, 4 disc burning takes 26 minutes to do 4 burns (simultaneously) of a disc that's 200MB. The speed is almost as though I'm burning the discs one at a time.

On Nero, when I select the option of Multiple Recorders and select all 4 drives to write the disc, the first time, 4 copies (simultaneously) of a 76 min music CD came out at 12 minutes. Not bad. The second, third, fourth and so on, one of the drives gets a "Track Error" right when the buffer depletes to 0% for about 6 seconds. I've having buffer problems with the burning. Is that hard drive not fast enough to transfer all the data to the 4 CDRW drives?? It's a SCSI with 8ms seek for crying out loud. When Nero completes, it gives me a message that about 220 buffer underruns were prevented. While the software is burning, the buffer fluctuates from 0% to 41% to 1% to 23% and so on... two of the drives can maintain their buffer at 90% for half of the burn but then they all start to fluctuate to 0% and back on up and whatnot.

I've also discovered that one of the drives is slower than the others. when I eject all drives at once and when I'm burning using all drives, one always lags behind like 30 seconds.

This is how the drives are connected:

CDRW#1 ---> Single, Master on Primary IDE on mainboard using the 80pin IDE cable (mother supports DMA66)
CDRW#2 ---> Single, Master on Secondary IDE on mainboard using the 80pin IDE cable
CDRW#3 ---> Single, Master on Primary IDE on Promise Ultra66 PCI Controller card using 80pin IDE cable
CDRW#4 ---> Single, Master on Secondary IDE on Promise Ultra66 PCI Controller card using 80pin IDE cable
Seagate 9.1GB 10kRPM on 68pin SCSI port onboard the motherboard

There's no other drives (except floppy) on the computer.

Any suggestions? Should I enable DMA? Where would I do that in Win 2k? Should I buy another Promise Ultra66 card? What else can I do? All suggestions are appreciated. Thank you.

 

[WW]

I love the title of this kb article:

Device Settings Are Hard to Find in Windows

(for DMA setting in w2k)

 

[musixian]

YES, set the DMA to on! That will make a HUGE difference, especially if you're using multiple burners.

If you aren't using DMA, most likely each transfer to each drive is taking some CPU cycles. Even with one drive, you're CPU will end up losing that battle.

 

[TechKnight]

Okay DMA is already enabled for all of the drives. I have noticed that it's one of the drives (the one that laggs) that is causing the excessive buffer underruns. For example, if I select to burn 3 drivess WITH the lagging drive as one of them, I would get over 100 buffer underrun errors (prevented by burn-proof). However, if I select the 3 drives that does include the lagging one then I get at most 1 buffer underrun error. Could there be something wrong with the drive? I'm going to try to swap cables and see if it's a hardware setting error. Any one know how to enable DMA on a Promise Ultra66 controller card? Or is it automatically enabled by default?

Another thing I've noticed about this lagging drive is that when the drive is part of the 3 drives that is burning, the buffer fluctuates between all the drives. However, when I burn with the three drives that does not include the lagging drive, the buffer are more or less stable at 76%. What could it be? Drive? Setting?

 

[TechKnight]

I have a theory on what might be one. I've swap the drives so it's not a cdrw drive issue. I think what is wrong is that the two cdrw drives on the Promise Ultra66 controller card is being limited by the capabilities of the PCI slot. Isn't the PCI slot only able to transfer 33MB/sec? Thus in order to solve the issue of the "lagging" drive, I need to get two Promise Ultra66 cards and put one cdrw on each of them to remove the bottleneck. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm beginning to think if this belongs in the highly technical issue forum since this isn't your common computer configuration.

 

[WW]

hmmm...

check the bios/driver version of the ultra66

the ultra66 should be able to do ata66 on each channel, no?

you said you were going to switch the ide cables....did you try that or did you just switch the drive?


the 33 mhz pci bus can do a theoretical transfer of 132MB/s burst....

12 speed cdroms need a data transfer rate of 1.8MB/s so you need 7.2MB/s for four 12 speed burners...(I think 🙂 )


have you tried maybe 6x for each burner and see if it works? what's the highest speed that all burners can do properly?

----------------------------------------------------
maybe consider doing this:

change iomega to plextor

then:

latest plextor firmware (read the version history of the previous upgrades too)

 

[TechKnight]

Originally posted by: WW
hmmm...

check the bios/driver version of the ultra66

Not too long ago, I upgraded the Ultra66 bios to the newest one on their website so unless they came out with a new BIOS in the past month, mines should be current.

the ultra66 should be able to do ata66 on each channel, no?

That's what I was thinking but the bottleneck seem to be one of the two drives on the card. Could my motherboard's PCI be the limitation for the Promise card?

you said you were going to switch the ide cables....did you try that or did you just switch the drive?


I switched the cables and the drives with one of the ones that were working properly, the buffer was still inbalanced.

the 33 mhz pci bus can do a theoretical transfer of 132MB/s burst....


12 speed cdroms need a data transfer rate of 1.8MB/s so you need 7.2MB/s for four 12 speed burners...(I think 🙂 )

have you tried maybe 6x for each burner and see if it works? what's the highest speed that all burners can do properly?

I will try that drives at a lower speed. Well, the first attempt, all drives burned the disc correctly, there was just 220 or so "buffer underun errors" that were prevented by burn-proof. The drives have a max burn speed of 12X. I will try 10X to see if I still get the track error and the buffer inbalance.

----------------------------------------------------
maybe consider doing this:

change iomega to plextor

then:

latest plextor firmware (read the version history of the previous upgrades too)

OHHH I didn't know flashing the iomega drives to plextor was a two step process. I will definitely flash the "plextor" drives to the newest revision. Thanks so much for your help! I'll post back on what I find!! 😀