LG GCE-8523B - DMA Problem

[Reiben]

Hi guys,

I have an LG GCE-8523B 52x24x52x CD-rw, and I upgraded my computer few days ago, and now i have an MSI Nforce2 motherboard. (I had an Chess VIA Chipset board before this and didnt have htis problem at all)

The problem is, my CD-RW insists on working in PI0 mode. Anyways, I read few threads on this forum about this DMA problems, and tired all, but none solved my problem. I have my CD-RW Connected as IDE2 - Master, and DVD-Rom (also an LG) connected as IDE2 - Slave. I also tried playing with the IDE and all (like connecting CD-RW alone, and connecting as slave etc.) but nothing worked and my CD-Rw is still working on PI0 mode, which is very annoying as you know.

My Nforce2 drivers are up-to-date, and i tried the firmware for LG-CD-rw, but it doesnt seem to work either... Like i said i also tried few other methods explained in these forums, about the DMA problem, but its still PI0...

So if anyone knows the answer, please help me because i really hate using this CD burner on PI0 mode.

[Inertia]

NVIDIA has problems with their IDE drivers.

See Those with IDE problems please post full details!.

One thing to try:

When installing drivers, and the option to install the SW IDE driver comes up, select "No" and see if this fixes the problem. You may need to figure out how to uninstall the current driver first.

[Reiben]

Thanks for the help, looks like this is not a simple problem to solve. This seems to be a very common issue, but people mentioned ways of fixhing this, none worked for my CD-Rw. Oh well, if it doesnt work ill have to burn CD'e extra slow-turtle mode i guess.

[Inertia]

You're welcome.

It seems that nForce users are hoping that NVIDIA will release IDE drivers that work. Keep your eye on the driver site and follow the IDE problem board and maybe you will be able to fix this DMA problem before too long.

Also take a look a the problems reported in this search at CD Freaks at http://forum.cdfreaks.com/search.php?s= ... descending
There are a couple of things that may work:

Use Microsoft IDE drivers, not nForce.

or - Using the latest nForce drivers, turn off UDMA in the BIOS for the IDE channel on which the burner is located. This was done by user Dee-ehn
at http://forum.cdfreaks.com/showthread.ph ... nForce+DMA This allowed his burner to be run in Multiword DMA (16.6 MB/sec), a true DMA mode which is adequate for the fastest burners.

[Reiben]

Yeah, ill try these, thanks again. One thing i wonder though, whats the speed for this PI0 mode? I mean if it was only slow i would be ok with it because CD-Writing speed is not that important for me, and I can always use DVD-Rom i have for reading. But this PI0 mode is somehow slowing down the PC too, and causing a great mouse-lag over screen. Anyways, thanks again, oh yea before i forget, I tried few more things and it said "Multi-Word DMA" for once, i tried using the drive then, but i saw it was slow yet again. I went back to device manager to check and it was back to PI0 mode. Nforce2 is a great chipset, but compatibility issues are real headaches...

[Inertia]

PIO Mode 4 transfers data at 16.6 MB/sec, which is the same speed as DMA Multiword 2. The problem isn't this adequate transfer speed, but the way the data is accessed. In PIO mode (non-DMA), all data is channeled through the CPU when it is accessed. This creates a CPU bottleneck, as eventually all CPU resources are used up before the burner reaches top speed.

DMA (Direct Memory Access) allows the data to bypass the CPU among other advantages (multithreading). This keeps the CPU utilization at a low level when transferring high levels of data. See Direct Memory Access (DMA) Modes and Bus Mastering DMA.

If you can get your sytem to stay in DMA Multiword 2, that will improve the operation of your burner tremendously. The CPU utilization is not quite as efficient as UDMA Mode 2 (33 MB/sec), but the difference will probably not be noticed. At full 52x speed, a burner requires only about 7.8 MB/sec throughput (cooked data - RAW throughput about 8.96 MB/sec).