[X4U] DVD Burner

[Keith Whaley]

Hi Eugene,

Eugene wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 07:28:34PM -0600, Mike Strawn wrote:
> : 
> : I recently purchased a Pioneer DVD-R 105 drive from Other World Computing to
> : burn DVD¹s on my G3. My problem is that I¹ve wasted 20 disks with only 2
> : successful burns. The drive appears to function properly, but at various
> : points in the process I get a ³Sense key error² and the burn fails. I¹m
> : running Panther (10.3.5) using XpostFacto on a G3 that has a G4 500 Mhz ZIF
> : chip. I¹ve tried using Toast and the Apple burn software at 2x, 1x and 4x
> : and nothing works with any consistency. The Apple System Profiler recognizes
> : the drive, so that¹s a mystery. I¹ve tried cheap and expensive media.
> : Anybody had a similar problem? If so, please help!

> The drive may not like your brand of DVD-R media.  

He says he's tried cheap and expensive brands, and has had no success.

> Try other brands and  see if the sense key errors stay consistent,
> decrease, or even disappear.

I'm not convinced this "problem" is related to format, so I'd guess CDs 
can have the same problem as you're experiencing.
I have had that problem with my CDs, and have had the same suggestion 
about "maybe it's the brand of CD I'm using," or, "perhaps it's the 
color of the plastic film over the recording media, vs. the color of my 
laser," or "maybe you're trying to record data on a music CD."

That last one makes no sense to me, because data is data, isn't it? What 
you're trying to is take analog data in whatever form and translate it 
into digital pulses, and record it on a disc that is designed to record 
digital pulses. Not so?

Maybe there's some truth to all of those contentions, but the salient 
fact remains, where everything else should be right, some of us cannot 
do a proper burn, or cannot get the computer to read a disc ~ evn tho' 
the computer recognizes the drive just fine. Even tho' we've 
successfully done it before, and all we've changed is the recorder itself.

It could be that we're trying to lay blame on the most obvious of the 
components, either the disc or the player, "things we can touch," while 
the problem could actually be any of a dozen other places. And probably 
is...

Frustrating, isn't it.

keith whaley