SATA Plextor DVD writer... experiences ?

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> I've got this drive and it is working properly in Hoary connected to a
> Intel ICH5 SATA-controller
> 
> scsi4 : ata_piix
>   Vendor: PLEXTOR   Model: DVDR   PX-712A    Rev: 1.05
>   Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 05
> Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0,  type 0
> Attached scsi generic sg1 at scsi3, channel 0, id 0, lun 0,  type 5
> sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
> Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
> Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi3, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
> 
> > Any things I should do to get this SATA drive to work in Ubuntu ?
> > Is it "blacklisted" or something ?
> 
> Just try to put the SATA in 'native/enhanced'-mode in the BIOS.
> 
> The output of `dmesg` would be interesting, especially the parts
> conserning your SATA-controller.
> 
> See http://linux.yyz.us/sata/sata-status.html for a real good list about
> SATA controller-support in recent kernels.
> 
> Regards,
> Ronald


Hi Ronalds,

Thanks a lot for your reply, it does help a lot ! :o)
following your e-mail, and some quick additional googling the facts are
now :

1) The drive is supposed to work in Ubuntu, or at least Hoary
2) That Sil 3112 SATA chip/card I have is not at all that crap/dirty
cheap generic stuff that I thought/assumed it was :
  - Adaptec has selected this chip as a base for a range of RAID
controller of theirs
  - The manufacturer (Silicon Image) is apparently heavily commited to
the open source principle : releases their full tech spec, create a a
number of Linux drivers, and even release the full PCB schematics ! :-)
 - support hot plugging (wow :o)
 - explicitely supports optical drives


Also, given that in Hoary the drive is detected properly, as well as the
SATA controller, my next step I think should be, in order :

1) Get the drive replaced or fixed
2) Wait for a stable release of the SATA controller's driver, as
apparently it's still only in "beta".
3) try the SATA controller and drive, on another motherboard/machine
4) google for eventual compatibility issues with this particular drive o
this particular controller, and get a different SATA controller.

But I "feel" (cross finger) that it's just a faulty drive, so hoping for
the best when I get a new or one.

This are the relevant lines when the kernel boots :

--------------
SCSI subsystem initialized
libata version 1.10 loaded.
sata_sil version 0.8
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNK1] enabled at IRQ 5
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:00.0[A] -> GSI 5 (level, low) -> IRQ 5
ata1: SATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xDEA5C080 ctl 0xDEA5C08A bmdma 0xDEA5C000
irq 5
ata2: SATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xDEA5C0C0 ctl 0xDEA5C0CA bmdma 0xDEA5C008
irq 5
ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:0f00 82:0000 83:0000 84:0000 85:0000 86:0000 87:0000
88:0007
ata1: dev 0 ATAPI, max UDMA/33
ata1(0): applying bridge limits
ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/33
scsi1 : sata_sil
ata2: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi2 : sata_sil
  Vendor: PLEXTOR   Model: DVDR   PX-712A    Rev: 1.04
  Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 05
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0,  type 5
--------------


And here is an example of the kernel errormessage when I try to burn
something with Nautilus :

-----------------
kernel: SCSI error: host 1 id 0 lun 0 return code = 8000002
kernel: ^ISense class 7, sense error 0, extended sense 0
kernel: Device sr0 not ready.
-----------------


And I also get dozens of full pages of these two errors, repeated
endlessly :

------
kernel: Additional sense: Tracking servo failure
kernel: Current sr: sense key Hardware Error
------

I am no specialist, but it "looks" like it's having problems chatting
with the drive, so hopefully a replacement drive should sort things
out... 

Then once this is fixed, next step is to get it working under Warty, as
I won't be using Hoary for everyday use. So I will need to find out what
needs to be done to Warty. Maybe update the kernel SATA driver, or the
kernel itself. Anyway, first things first, let's get it working in
Hoary...


--
Vince