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Unable to select DMA for dvdrw drive

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 6:55 pm
by ac tech
hi,
my 600e & 600x select PIO mode only.
if i uninstall the drive (device manager) and ide channel, then reboot the mode changes to 'multi-word DMA mode 2', but the pc freezes (hd light stays on) & the dvd drive will not access/read anything?

back in PIO mode the drive works, but dvd burning is approx 1.5x speed (45minutes)

is this normal?

can anyone help?

thanks to all who reply :)

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 8:04 pm
by Poju
And operating system is?

Have u tryed to force dma on in device manager?

Out of free dma's?

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 1:15 am
by ac tech
sorry :? running xp pro on the 600e and sp2 on the 600x.
both select the dvd as secondary slave.....could this be the problem?

how do you force the dma thingy?

thanks.

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:14 am
by whizkid
For the 600X (and maybe the 600E), you can turn ON quick boot in EZSetup. This will make the OS assign resources to the hardware. If it's off, the BIOS assigns resources and the OS cannot change them.

If it's already on, try the ThinkPad Configuration tool to change resources.

The UltraSlimBay, IIRC, should put its device as secondary master. Mine always has, so I'm not sure how to make that happen.

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 6:26 pm
by ac tech
i found some info that points to the fact that the drive firmware denotes the secondary master or slave.
on cdfreaks people have had problems with different drives/laptops, udma2 is only available on the master channel.
my toshiba cdrom runs secondary master udma2 :)
my teac dvdr runs on secondary slave, so conflicts with the ibm bios and takes ages to boot/locks up in multiword udma.
seems like the only fix is firmware mod.....a no go'er......
or iv'e found that if i bridge the dvdr connector pins 45 & 47 together this should (i hope) select the master channel to enable udma2 support :D

so steady hand & soldering iron, here i come

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 7:09 pm
by GomJabbar
ac tech wrote:so steady hand & soldering iron, here i come
You're really desperate aren't you. :shock:

I really think that your problem is that you have a limited number of resources available. Have you tried my suggestion of disabling the Infrared Port in device manager, then rebooting? In addition you may need to uninstall the IDE devices as mentioned before and reboot after uninstalling the Infrared Port. Another possibility, can you use a different DMA mode with either your hard drive or DVD drive?

I note that on my T42, my hard drive uses IRQ 14, and the DVD drive uses IRQ 15 (as seen in Primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE Channel in device manager). What IRQ's are your drives using?

I had a 600E with DMA enabled on both the hard drive and the DVD drive. On this 600E I had the Infrared Port disabled. I did no other special tweaks that I can remember. I had the latest BIOS update, IBM driver updates, and Windows Updates on this laptop. This 600E was running Windows 2000 SP4. I suppose it is possible that your DVD drive requires more resources than mine did, but that wouldn't be my first guess.

Firmware to make your Drive 2nd Master and DMA compliant.

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 7:44 pm
by MadeInJapan
Yes, my infra red is also disabled on my 600E. Another option is to actually check to see what your DVD drive is, go over to www.cdfreaks.com and search for it in the forum section. You might be surprised that others have had the same issue and there is firmware that will change it from 2nd Slave to 2nd Master, it that's indeed your issue. Secondary Slave will not be DMA enabled if I recall correctly from my 600E. Good luck