AB9-Pro - DVD burning weirdness

[Richh]

Hi all, first post here but I've been on the alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit newsgroup for eons, so please go easy, all the colour and emoticons here are a bit more than I'm used to on Usenet!

Recently built an AB9-Pro/C2D E6400/1GB Corsair XMS2-6400-based system for a friend. Everything works great and it overclocks really well, there's just one really annoying problem that's foxed me so far, and about the only thing I haven't tried so far is reinstalling Windows. Before I go to that stage, thought I'd give this a try.

The problem is that the fepping thing won't burn a DVD. It'll burn CD's without problem on the Sony DRU-810A and CRX-230EE drives that are installed, but try and burn a DVD, and Nero will sit there at the "Checking Discs" stage before timing out. Trying to burn a DVD through Pinnacle Studio just freezes the application completely, hard reset is normally the only answer. Reading from the drive's not a problem, and neither is burning CD's, but writing DVD's is just a complete no-no.

I've tried connecting the DVD burner on its own via the JMicron controller, tried it connected to an old ATAPI compliant Promise Ultra66 PCI controller, tried connecting it via a Serillel II adapter to the Intel southbridge, none of which has resulted in any success.

I've pretty much ruled out a faulty drive as the writer works fine when connected to my system, so all in all I'm pretty stumped. Board shipped with BIOS 1.3 on it and I've since flashed up to 1.5, and that's not made any difference.

The one common thread I've noted is that Nero's error logs note that DMA on the writer is disabled - but there's no option in the JMicron driver to re-enable it. Have tried the old trick of deleting the drive and driver references out of Device Manager in the hope that DMA will get re-enabled, but that hasn't made any difference either.

If I can't think of anything else I'll try installing a fresh iteration of XP on a test hard disk over the weekend, as that's about the only thing I haven't tried yet. In the meantime, if anyone's got any suggestions, I'm all ears!

[ABIT Sean]

What version of nero are you using?

[Richh]

Hi Sean, currently using 6.6.1.4. Don't think this is a "Nero issue" as such tho due to the fact that Pinnacle Studio also freezes when attempting to begin the DVD authoring process. Stick a CD-R in the same drive and tell Pinnacle to burn a VCD or SVCD, and no such problems.

[ABIT Sean]

I know of a least one person who had problems with Nero 6 and the AB9 series motherboard. When I ran some tests I used nero 7 and had no problems. Give it I try and see what happens.

[Richh]

Okies, will do. PC not currently in my possession so will try the version 7 tryout over the weekend and see what that does. Cheers!

[Richh]

Grrr, well, I've tried Nero 7.5, and still getting exactly the same problem. It'll burn CDs fine, but try to burn a DVD and it sits there for a minute or two and then times out just like Nero 6.x

Nero's logs still report that DMA is disabled on the optical drive. Again I've tried both the JMB36x and my old Promise PCI ATA controller, neither works.

I've also found some forum posts in various places noting DVD problems on the AB9-Pro, especially related to the JMB363, so it seems as though this is not altogether a one-off. Currently using the JMicron drivers available via the download page at abit.com.tw, are there any newer/beta options? Doesn't seem to be any driver page at all at jmicron.com, unless I need better glasses!

Oh - a possibly related note. Nero InfoTool won't run at all, it just freezes immediately after initialisation, while Nero DriveSpeed shows crappy DVD read performance - 1.02x on a 16x drive. Certainly seems to be something fundamental up with the DVD side of things...

[ABIT Sean]

If the drive is not working correctly on the jmicron or you PCI ATA controller then it can't be a fault with the motherboard controller. Have you tried another DVD writer or maybe update the firmware on the drive?

[Richh]

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the DVD drive. It's running the latest release firmware from Sony (1.0e), and I've tried it on my own system and it works peachy. I've also tried flashing the latest Benq DD-DW1640 firmware (as the "Sony" drive is a 1640 clone). No difference.

I've also tried another (Pioneer) DVD drive on the AB9-Pro based system to see if there's a specific issue with the JMicron and Sony drive - again no worky.

I've also just tried a clean install. Minimal hardware configuration, all unnecessary onboard peripherals disabled, Intel and Jmicron drivers loaded via F6 and floppy, then XPSP2, then once OS is installed, Intel chipset drivers/video drivers/etc. Same problem. Upgrade the JMicron drivers to the beta, again no worky.

If the drive is not working correctly on the jmicron or you PCI ATA controller then it can't be a fault with the motherboard controller

That doesn't altogether follow I'm afraid, as I'm not 100% sure the Promise PCI controller (and its drivers) I'm using is fully ATAPI compatible in the first place. I think it is but it's that long since I've used it I can't remember for sure.

I know the ATAPI compatibility on the Highpoint HPT37x devices was on and off with different driver and BIOS builds. Don't recall whether Promise's stuff went the same way. The only reason I tried this controller in the first place is because it just happened to be here.

Either way it seems pretty clear that there is an issue of some sort with the JMicron controller, there are posts about it all over the web, and not just on Abit boards.

There are a number of threads on the Abit USA forum (which I'd have linked to if the forum rules had allowed me to!) including one suggested fix which involves a beta JMicron driver. Unfortunately that doesn't work in this particular case. About the only difference I do notice with this beta driver installed, is that Nero InfoTool, rather than just hanging, will force the PC to spontaneously reboot as soon as it goes into its "gathering drive information" phase. Ouch!

Sitting here thinking how dull it is that Intel dropped parallel ATA support from their southbridges in a context where 99% of optical drives still need a parallel interface....

[Richh]

Ah, I've now got five posts, so let's try this again:

http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=113721

[ABIT Sean]

I will run some tests tomorrow and see what I can come up with.

[Richh]

Smoking, thanks Sean

[Papa Lazarou]

Did anything ever come of this?

I don't burn many DVD's but find now I've had to burn a few I notice I seem to have a problem... I am using a Pioneer DVR109 16x drive on the Jmicron IDE port.

Unlike the OP it IS burning - just very slowly. I would say about 4x max in real terms (even though Nero 7 says burning at 16x, with 16x rated media). It just has to keep slowing itself down to avoid buffer under-runs and takes about 15mins to burn a DVD.

I am using an SATA Raptor and a 320GB Caviar as my main drives, plugged into the Intel chipset ports, and speeds are tested at roughly 85mb/sec and 55mb/sec respectively. Should be enough disk speed to burn at full rate, I'd have thought?

Haven't updated the Jmicron drivers, and bought the board in August. I'm scared to update them really as I've heard of all sorts of problems being caused..

[Richh]

Daaaaaa-aaaaave! Oops, sorry!

I got to the bottom of this in the end, with a beta JMicron driver I found on - I think - Gigabyte's site. Had to go out of my way to uninstall and then delete all traces of the previous driver too.

As mentioned up top I don't have access to the system concerned and thus haven't done any proper performance testing/benchmarking etc - once I go it to the stage where they could burn DVDs without me getting a phonecall, I was happy.

Built another AB9 based system just before Christmas, and used the same 1.5 BIOS/Gigabyte-derived beta JMB driver and it worked out of the box, although that was with an NEC DVD drive rather than the Sony one that caused problems previously. Obviously no way to be certain whether the drive model is significant without doing some A/B testing.

I believe I'm correct in thinking that the release JMicron driver is now a newer build than that beta so one hopes they've got it licked. I'll likely be building another system based around an AB9 derivative soonish, so I sure hope so!

[Papa Lazarou]

Totally forgot I posted this

Thanks for the assist, I will give it a try. Or might even just buy an SATA DVD drive and disable the Jmicron!!

[Richh]

Lol, know what you mean!

I've got a couple of Serillel II converters hanging around, and I notice that Scan do a Silicon Image-based PCIe x1 SATA controller for £20 or something like that. If the JMB363 gives me any problems on the next one I build, I'm going to give that route a go.