Re: No supported write modes with LG GSA-H62N SATA DVD+RW

On 9/10/07, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote:

Hi,

> I've seen a couple of discussions about similar problems to mine with
> different models (the H30N seemed to be a hot topic about six weeks ago)
> but I haven't seen any suggestions that make things work (or at least
> point to a cause of the failure) for me.

There was one incident of a remedy:
The user exchanged the SATA controller which connected
the drive with the computer.

I'm not completely opposed to that, but I've been considering that a non-solution so far since it appears that the controller isn't completely defective, just not completely functional in Linux.

The controller I'm using is the on-board one with my motherboard, an older DFI K8M800, which makes it difficult to find out exactly what hardware the put on the board unless you know what you're looking for, and when it comes to SATA stuff, I don't, really. lspci reports it as:

00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
        Subsystem: DFI Inc Unknown device 1004
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 32
        Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 16
        Region 0: I/O ports at e200 [size=8]
        Region 1: I/O ports at e300 [size=4]
        Region 2: I/O ports at e400 [size=8]
        Region 3: I/O ports at e500 [size=4]
        Region 4: I/O ports at e600 [size=16]
        Region 5: I/O ports at e700 [size=256]
        Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

What I can find is this from dmesg:

[   19.000262] SCSI subsystem initialized
[   19.004251] libata version 2.20 loaded.
[   19.005282] sata_via 0000:00:0f.0: version 2.1
[   19.005581] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [ALKA] enabled at IRQ 20
[   19.005654] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0f.0[B] -> Link [ALKA] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[   19.005841] sata_via 0000:00:0f.0: routed to hard irq line 11
[   19.005956] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x0001e200 ctl 0x0001e302 bmdma 0x0001e600 irq 16
[   19.006055] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x0001e400 ctl 0x0001e502 bmdma 0x0001e608 irq 16
[   19.006144] scsi0 : sata_via
[   19.211755] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
[   19.382064 ] ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0x0001e207
[   19.392764] ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0x0001e207
[   19.559211] ata1.00: ATAPI, max UDMA/100
[   19.726873] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
[   19.726942 ] scsi1 : sata_via
[   19.934288] ata2: SATA link down 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   19.944979] ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0x0001e407
[   19.948040] scsi 0:0:0:0: CD-ROM            HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H62N CL00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[   19.974628] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[   19.974710] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[   19.974930] sr 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
[   19.978871] sr 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 5

I trimmed the IDE bits, but I'll provide a full dmesg if anyone thinks that's likely to be enlightening.

----------------------------------------------------

Questions:

- Can you find out the type of that SATA controller ?

Let me know if the information above isn't what you were looking for and I'll do some more digging around.

- Would it work with growisofs and DVD-R or unformatted
  DVD-RW ?
  (For these media the drive gets sent a mode page 05h,
   like with CD-R, CD-RW.)

I'll have to get back to you on that, I'll try that when I get in front of the machine again in a few hours.

- Are you willing to do experiments with program cdrskin ?

At this stage I'll entertain any suggestions if it helps me figure out what the root cause is. I'd rather find a solution that uses cdrecord, but as far as I'm concerned I'm still in the analysis phase of the problem, not the part where I try to actually fix anything. :-)

Thanks for the suggestions, please pass me along any instructions you have on what I should try.