[Wylug-discuss] DVD-RW fun... don't buy a Sony.

[James Holden]

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All,

Thought I'd share some of my recent fun with a DVD+/-RW drive I bought,
and subsequently returned for a different one.

I thought I'd start doing DVD versions of distros on fastdiscs, so I
went for a Sony DR-18A from CCL, only it turns out to be a cheapie
LiteOn hiding under the Sony brand.

After a bit of futzing around installing dvdrtools, the DVD capable fork
of cdrecord, I got it recognised and tried burning a 4.1GB ISO of Fedora
Core 2 onto DVD-R media. It appeared to complete, but there were some
strange delays of up to 10 minutes or so. The disc read back OK on the
writer, but there were odd unreadble files when I tried it on my other
machine.

Having hit Google, it seems that the Sony only works OK if you flash it
with the firmware for it's LiteOn doppelganger. Back it went.

I've just installed an NEC ND-2510A and it works faultlessly, and the
resulting disks are readable on all the other drive's I've tried.

SO....

Don't buy a Sony, they're gold plated camel dung.

Do buy an NEC 2510, cos they're penguin friendly, and support dual layer
media too (when it comes down to a less insane price).

Have fun!

James

- --
James Andrew Holden, Leeds, UK    (james at jamesholden dot net)
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jamesholden.net ICQ: 11290827 >Buy Linux CDs from fastdiscs.com<
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