Re: [seul-edu] problems writing CDs

[Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw@bigpond.com>]

On Mon, 27 May 2002 12:20 am, Dave Prentice wrote:
> Hello,
>     I'm trying to set up a CD burner so I can duplicate stuff to use at
> school. (Available software is either x-cd-roast or gnome toaster under
> RedHat 7.2.) I just got hold of a SAF CD-R 2004 burner and a Compaq
> CR-503BCQ reader. Both drives read just fine.
>
> When I try to copy a CD on gnome toaster I get the following error message:
>
> Operation starts.
> cdrecord: SAO writing not available or not implemented for this drive.
> cdrecord: cannot send CUE sheet.
> child exited unexpectedly.
> CD recording process finished.
>
> On X-CD-roast I get a message that "Your CD-writer did not accept the CUE
> sheet needed for DAO writing."
>
>     However, this drive explicitly _does_ support DAO. As I write this I'm
> retrying X-CD-roast with TAO and it seems to be working, but isn't there a
> disadvantage with TAO as opposed to DAO?

1.  I recently had a similar problem with some Diamond Data Re-Writable discs 
I bought.  XCDRoast reported that it could not send the cue sheet.  However, 
upon using cdrecord from the command line, I got the full error message:
# cdrecord blank=fast dev=0,0,0
<snip>
cdrecord: Input/output error. blank unit: scsi sendcmd: no error
CDB:  A1 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 12 00 00 00 00 27 00 00 00
Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
Sense Code: 0x27 Qual 0x00 (write protected) Fru 0x0
Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
cmd finished after 0.004s timeout 9600s
cdrecord: Cannot blank disk, aborting.

A bit more of a search on the web, I am came to the suspicion that the discs 
were just not compatible with either my drive or CDRecord under Linux, or 
both.  I could not get them to work with either DAO or TAO.

I bought some TDK CD-RW disks, and everything was fine.  Strangly enough, the 
TDK disks (which do work on my system) have the following warning on the back 
of the case: "In some cases, this disc may not be usable in certain CD-RW 
drives or with certain writing software and CD-ROM drives."

I think this warning should be on *all* blank CD discs, and particularly 
re-writable ones.

For more info on your disc and cdwriter, do
# cdrecord -scanbus
This will output the <scsibus>,<target>,<lun> of your cdwriter.

# cdrecord -atip dev=<scsibus>,<target>,<lun>
This will give you information about your drive and the cd.

>     I know what TAO and DAO are, but what are SAO and CUE sheets?

man cdrecord
<snip>
       -dao   Set  Disk  At  Once mode.  This currently only works with MMC 
drives that support Session At Once mode.

I think we can safely summise that SAO stands for Session At Once, and is 
required for DAO.

My *guess* is that the cue sheet is what cdrecord sends the drive before the 
data, so that the drive knows what to do with the data once it gets it.

> Also, I'm
> using single speed because I haven't been able to find the read/write speed
> settings to use for the SAF. They're not on the SAF tech support site. Does
> anybody have these specs, as well as any suggestions?

In my experience, if you leave off the speed paramater on the cdrecord 
command line, it will attempt to do the fastest speed possible in the 
relevant mode (for me that is 8x on CD-R, and 4x on CD-RW).

Other suggestions: man cdrecord, http://www.google.com/linux, LUG...

Using cdrecord from the command line has the advantage that it makes things 
_scriptable_.  IMO, XCDRoast's main advantage is that it easily allows safe 
non-root cd burning access, and provides a gui for creating custom cd's.

Hope all this helps.

Rasjid.