Yet another Pioneer DVR-104 problem.

[Phemo]

When I first bought my drive, (which came with firmware 1.20 as standard), I tested it at work on a P4 system with an Intel chipset - it wrote with no problems whatsoever.

However, on installing the drive in my main system, I found that it is also affected by the strange 'communications error' problem that seems to be plaguing many users. Both Nero and Gear DVD give me similar errors. Interestingly, the problem goes altogether when I force PIO mode on the drive, but my CPU usage is very high whilst writing.

When I first encountered the problem, I wasn't aware that forcing the drive to PIO mode would be a solution, so I tried it in my Pentium 4 system, and it worked perfectly.

My main system is a dual Athlon MP 2000+ with an Asus A7M266-D motherboard with AMD 760MPX chipset- 35% cpu usage whilst burning on this system just isn't right. I have a RAID card installed as well as a ton of hard drives, but the problem still persisted even when I left just a single drive connected and the RAID card removed. I left the DVR-104 on its own channel as a master, still no luck.

My Pentium 4 system is an overclocked 1.6A @2.13 with an Abit BD7-RAID motherboard, using an Intel 845D chipset, and the cpu usage whilst writing is never over 10%.

I've only thought of one almost definitive solution - to purchase a seperate IDE controller. Of course, it's possible it won't work, but my reasons for doing so is to eliminate the AMD 760MPX's IDE controller - the card I have purchased has a Promise controller, and I've heard of people using a DVR-104 on these controllers with no problems. I'd try the drive on my RAID card, but it's a HighPoint chipset-based card, and HighPoint removed support for ATAPI devices in an earlier BIOS revision.

My card arrives on Tuesday, so I'll post again shortly to let you all know if it solved the problem or not. In the meantime, if anyone's got any other suggestions on somewhat easier ways of solving the problem, it'd be greatly appreciated.

[elpresidente]

welcome to the forum mate ....

üsse

[Phemo]

Thanks elpresidente

Well, my card arrived today, a day later than expected. On installing it and messing around with cables, I'm happy to report that it now works perfectly My cpu usage whilst writing a DVD is now a much more realistic 1 to 3%, and I haven't had a single 'communications error' with Nero.

Finally, I can use my 104 and do other things as I'm meant to do.

[Taz69]

I havean Abit NV7-133R motherboard and have similar problems with Nero needing PIO mode.

Solution : Use RecordNow MAX instead of Nero

It is a much better program for DVD-r support.

[Mazze]

From what I've heard you can't write in DMA mode from anything else then a primary partition. I have the same problem as you but haven't had time to try it out yet.