Hi,

A weird one:

I thought I had a bad DVR-109 until I tested with 40 pins cable (to solve a DVD+RW overwriting bug: now solved by latest firmware).

To resume:

- If DVR-109 is master (alone) on a 80 pins cable, CDSpeed shows abnormal graphic (PCAV) as you can see in the pictures below. First one is Via4.56 drivers (similar graph with Via 4.40) and second one is MS Standard Dual IDE controller. This is with a Mitsumi 4x DVD+RW.

- When testing with standard 40 pins cable, Pioneer revert to UDMA33 and the graph is normal (CAV). Same thing with multiword Dma Mode 2 and PIO4. The third graph shows the evidence.

- To be sure, I swapped the 80 pins cable to another one, thus eliminating the possibility of a bad cable. No change.

- I tried the Via miniport drivers. No chance, CDSpeed won't run with them so I don't know if the transfer rate is ok or not.


The only thing I can do now is let the Pioneer on standard IDE cable but I would like to be able to gain the full UDMA4.

Any ideas...?

Ok, something to add:

If I plug the Pioneer in master slave configuration with my CD-ROM on IDE channel 1, it is recognized as Multi Word DMA Mode 2 in WinXP. I'm already aware of this because it is a limitation of my particular mainboard (MSI K7T Turbo LE). To gain full UDMA rate, I had to put it on IDE channel 0. But doing this, the Hard Drive lost 8-10 mb of throughtput on IDE channel 1.

Now, I want to have my Hard Drive on channel 0 to get full transfer on it. I need it because I use my computer as a Digital Audio Workstation and maximum transfer rate could make a difference. If HDD is on channel 0 I must put Pionner and CD-ROM on channel 1. As I said, I'm then limited to MWDMA 2 (theoritically 16 mb/s). In fact, device burst rate shows 13 mb/s in CDSpeed. I understand that it will limit writing on DVD medias to 8x maximum. It do not bother me because I mainly use the DVD Burner as a backup solution. I'm not doing any DVD ripping and it is ok for me to use only 4x medias (I'm not interested to pay more for 8x or 16x medias).

But I have a question : Will I be limited too when reading DVD or CD medias?

Thanks.

EDIT: I already answered my own question: CDSpeed ends at 40x when reading CD's in PIO4. Same thing in UDMA4.

Again, my own answer:

I'm limited when reading DVD-R I made. The curve in CDSpeed goes fine until it reaches 10x (probably the max MultiWordDma can handle...) and then it become scrambled and falls between 2 and 3x. I guess that's because the controller can't take these higher speed and something weird happen...!

I'll probably put the Pioneer Master on IDE 0 with CDRom slave, connecting via 40 pins IDE cable.

Regarding the HDD, I'll connect it on my Promise built-in controller.