NEC ND-6500A DVD Drive not reading DVDs

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fleamourian · #1 Post by **fleamourian** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 12:20 pm

First of all is it possible to play movie DVDs on my laptop? I always assumed it was. I have tried a free & paid up version of DVD software but disk spins & nothing happens. The firmware according to Nero info & when I googled it is Dell?!? Is this the problem. It was sold as a non OEM but is stamped as IBM. Am I misunderstanding the term?

NEC will at cost upgrade firmware but only for NEC retail drives not with OEM releases.

Kaervak · #2 Post by **Kaervak** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 12:40 pm

The firmware being from Dell doesn't matter. I have an ND-6650A with Dell firmware in my T23 and dvd playback/burning work without issue. I'm assuming you're running Windows, have you tried Media Player Classic? http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=403110

As far as firmware updates go: http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_file.php?site= ... 00_D23.ZIP That's the latest Dell one I can find. If you're feeling adventurous you can use a program called Binflash to flash the firmware from the Dell one to a NEC one. http://club.cdfreaks.com/f86/binflash-n ... er-105676/

It also couldn't hurt to physically remove the drive from the system and reinsert it. It's possible something isn't making full contact. You could also try uninstalling the drive in device manager, that could help.

fleamourian · #3 Post by **fleamourian** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:33 pm

Awww immense!!! I can watch DVDs now, thank you kindly. That little player is pretty cool, will a paid version have better scrn resolution? Or is that jst my screen?

Thanks again, reinserting worked.

Kaervak · #4 Post by **Kaervak** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 3:08 pm

Nope that's the max resolution of a DVD. 720 wide by 480 tall. You can make it go full screen and it will still look pretty good though. If you want higher resolution, HD-DVD or Blu-Ray are it and they're friggin expensive. Good to hear everything is working again.

fleamourian · #5 Post by **fleamourian** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 3:56 pm

I've literally never played a DVD on my laptop till now, so it's pretty cool. Can I ask what reasons there are for stutter? I've switched off antivirus & the like while disconnected from the internet. I notice there is a lot of HDD activity during playback, my drive is a bit knackered with lots of reallocated sectors, which I am replacing with a Seagate 7200rpm this Mon. Failing that I must also check the DVD itself is not dirty!

andyP · #6 Post by **andyP** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 4:07 pm

Regarding the stutter, if I remember rightly you can change a setting in bios which solves this problem. I believe under display you need to swap the setting from pci to agb or vice versa.

DoctorLondom · #7 Post by **DoctorLondom** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 6:59 pm

fleamourian wrote:I've literally never played a DVD on my laptop till now, so it's pretty cool. Can I ask what reasons there are for stutter? I've switched off antivirus & the like while disconnected from the internet. I notice there is a lot of HDD activity during playback, my drive is a bit knackered with lots of reallocated sectors, which I am replacing with a Seagate 7200rpm this Mon. Failing that I must also check the DVD itself is not dirty!

Make sure Ultra-DMA is enabled (I see you have Win2k, which does not enable it by default):

1. Start -> Run -> "devmgmt.msc"

2. Find "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" and expand it

3. For the "Primary" and "Secondary" channels, right click, hit properties, go to Advanced Settings, and make sure the transfer modes are set to "DMA if available"

fleamourian · #8 Post by **fleamourian** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:01 pm

I guess playback is sketchy on old kit. Is there such a thing as a hardware PCMCIA card decoder? It could never run visualizations in Win Media Player 9 at same time as music. It's watchable but not perfect.

Kaervak · #9 Post by **Kaervak** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 8:01 pm

I know there's PCI hardware decoders. Not too sure about PCMCIA ones. As far as the stuttering goes, definitely check the DMA setting of the IDE controller in the device manager. For some goofy reason in Windows 2000 it's set to PIO only by default when it should be DMA. That very well could be the cause.

fleamourian · #10 Post by **fleamourian** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 8:23 pm

The secondary IDE channel was set to PIO like you say. Using Clean Ram 1.10 helped a great deal, apparently frees up unnecessary RAM usage.

Kaervak · #11 Post by **Kaervak** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 11:13 pm

fleamourian wrote:The secondary IDE channel was set to PIO like you say. Using Clean Ram 1.10 helped a great deal, apparently frees up unnecessary RAM usage.

Yeah definitely change that to DMA. That should take care of the stuttering completely.

fleamourian · #12 Post by **fleamourian** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:31 pm

Thanks folks. Watched a whole movie which jumped once due to freak of nature. She's a beauty!!!

NEC ND-6500A DVD Drive not reading DVDs

NEC ND-6500A DVD Drive not reading DVDs

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