Re: Combo DVD/CDRW drive
On Sun, 20 Oct 2002, Luis Mendes wrote:
> I am about to purchase a combo dvd/cdrw drive and I would
> like to ask for some advice to make sure I get a linux compatible one.
>
> First of all here is what I have
>
> Toshiba 1800-314 with celeron 1.1
> graphics chip Trident CyberBlade XP
>
> I have found one manufacturer which claims compatibility with linux:
> AMACOM.
Unless the device in question uses a special interface card or a
non-standard protocol, almost every CD-ROM type device will work just
fine with Linux. Almost no manufacturer mentions this because it's not
really a selling point.
> They offer the EZ combo and the baby combo, the later being more
> expensive. So my questions are
>
> 1) As anyone got any experience with one of these?
Not those directly, no.
> 2) which interface should I go for? they offer pcmcia 16 bit or 32 bit
> paralell, usb and firewire.
USB 1.1 devices (most laptops) have very slow connections -- you would
be lucky to get 4x CD writing working.
16bit PCMCIA is also quite slow and CPU intensive, though you shouldn't
get any real performance issues when writing with it.
Parallel is the worst of all of them, although it can sometimes work
more swiftly than 1.1 USB block devices, depending on the hardware
involved.
I would suggest getting the Firewire device, because it's the best
supported of them all, but read up on the 1394 support available at
<http://linux1394.org/> first.
Also, this probably means you want to build your own kernel binaries so
that you can keep up to date with work on the firewire stuff...
The 32bit PCMCIA is as good as a PCI card, performance wise, but you
need to know if the card in question is supported by Linux PCMCIA first.
Make sure you check that.
> 3) Any experience with any other model? Freecom also offer two combo
> drives but I could not find any information about compatibility with
> linux
The Freecom external ATAPI<->firewire bridge boxes, which is what the
DVD thing is put inside, work fine with Linux, modulo the notes about
firewire support above.
Any external firewire block device should support the SBP-2 protocol,
which means that they all behave in a standard way...
> 4)At last, will I be able to use the TV out port of the laptop to
> watch dvd's on a tv? If yes, do I need any extra hardware for this?
No idea, but in general you don't need anything but the adapter cable
that came with your laptop, in terms of hardware.
In terms of software you are probably going to have a harder time unless
you can make the device display on a television from the BIOS. There are
very few (Matrox only) supported TV-Out video cards under Linux, really.
Even my ATI chipset, which is pretty well supported, needs to use the
BIOS to turn on the TV-Out and it's not adjustable at all. :/
Daniel
--
If a joke is worth telling, it's worth telling once.
-- Ollie MacNoonan
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