Thinkpads Forum

I have 2 600x both configured exactly alike with the same model CD drives. When movie files (mpeg & divx) are played back on one of them the movie often pauses or just stalls and will not start again when played from the CD drive. I have tried other players including Real Player, Real Alternative and VLC and found no improvements in any of those. I also have tried swapping drives between the 2 machines with no help. When the same files are played back after being copied to the hard drive or from a portable external hard drive there are no problems.

Did you check at which speed the drives runs? 24X,20X,16X,10X or 4X?
Also have you tried to swap the hard drives between the machines? If so did you notice any difference in the video reproduction?

The hard drives are also identical 60GB Samsung and I have tried swapping them out too. The files play fine from any hard drive. It's only when I try to play from CD.

I am not sure how to check the CD drive speed and was not aware that it was something that could be adjusted.

turbines wrote:The hard drives are also identical 60GB Samsung and I have tried swapping them out too. The files play fine from any hard drive. It's only when I try to play from CD.
I am not sure how to check the CD drive speed

Download and use this tool it will help on getting the specs of the drive.

Get Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.7.0.0 released

Good luck!

Carlos.

Did you enable DMA for that problematic drive? Also, did you set "hardware acceleration" for your graphics hardware to "Full"?

I am not sure how I set the hardware acceleration or enable DMA on that drive. Is all that done in Device Manager?

Hardware acceleration:

Control Panel > Display.
Settings tab > Advanced.
Troubleshoot tab.

There you can select the hardware acceleration.

DMA Mode:

Control Panel > System.
Hardware tab > Device Manager.
IDE Controllers.
Select the secondary channel > Right-click > Properties.
Advanced Settings tab.

Ensure that 'DMA if available' is selected.
You can also see the current transfer mode in operation for that channel.

warwound.

VLC player is prolly the thinnest player out there, if it's giving you problems, the problems are elsewhere on a resource drain.

I assume that the 600X is from a fresh recovery. Use the default Win98 recovery from Ibm, it's fast and fantastic. This machine won't run faster on 2k or Xp. Also, I assume you've stuffed plenty of ram in there. Since it takes PC66/100 sticks, they are easy to find locally without resorting to E-auctions.

Test the playbacks of the DivX/XviD files copied onto the hdd, not from the optical. As opticals age, they often spend more time error correcting than streaming data.

We've gotten VLC player to play back XviD movies in full screen without frame drops on 380ED's.... that's a P-II 366Mhz, with some old school DSJA-whatever hdd that runs on PIO Only.

Have you tried using 16-bit color mode as opposed to 24-bit? I know that on a 600E, DVDs will only playback properly in 16-bit mode. If that doesn't work, try using 800x600 screen resolution; that's how I managed to get my 300mhz ThinkPad 600 to playback DVDs without any skipping or lagging.

I had this problem with my 2645-550 model.

I solved it by getting a Margi DVD-to-GO PCMCIA card for £10 off ebay.

I loaded the drivers off the Dell website, and it runs as smoooth as silk, in fact I'm watching "Ripping Yarns" on it now

Yeah, if you want good DVD playback on a 600 or 600E without having to lower the resolution, you'll need a hardware decoder card. Supposedly, because of the AGP bus, if you keep color depth at 16-bit, the 600E can play full screen DVDs without extra hardware but even on the 400mhz 600E I used to own, video was always somewhat choppy. It seems the 2.5mb (or 2mb on the 600) NeoMagic chip just can't handle the load of a full screen DVD.

Had the same issues with dvd's on my 600x. So frustrating because its so close to flawless playback! Tried every different dvd software out there but each one stalls or is choppy in a different way - so I'm determined that its a small tweak - a slight drop out somewhere along the line that different players lose in different ways.

Anyway I got the Margi card installed the drivers, had various annoying problems with it etc, etc. However at the same time as I got the card I also recieved 256mb PC100 RAM. DVDs are playing back now almost flawlessly (depending on what other applications are running in the background). I think its the extra RAM not the margi card cos I pop that out and the dvds still run the same! I know this isn't a technical explanation but I expect maxing out your RAM (I've got a 256 and a 128 - gonna get another 256 though) will help and also put in a DVD drive that reads at a higher speed which I will be trying in a few weeks.