The Formac Devideon Saga

[David Thrasher]

Well I tried out my new Formac Devideon drive and yes, as reported, there is a problem. (Of course I found out about the problems about it on this list as it was being shipped and of course I have a G3 iMac and there are very few other options for DVD burning).

I tried simply making a copy of a DVD I already had using Toast. The DVD was one containing a short film of mine, so there was no region coding or copy protection. The DVD showed right up on my Mas OS 9.2.2 desktop as it should and I was able to create a disk image of it with Toast. When I attempted to burn it back onto a Verbatim DVD+R (I bought the Devideon that does both kinds) I got the following errors, one after the other, after it attempted to burn (Toast at first didn't think a disk was inserted):

"The drive reported an error:
Sense Key = ILLEGAL REQUEST
Sense Code = 0x24
INVALID FIELD IN CDB"

"The drive reported an error:
Sense Key = ILLEGAL REQUEST
Sense Code = 0x72, 0x03
SESSION FIXATION ERROR - INCOMPLETE TRACK IN SESSION"

"Lead-in or lead out failed to be written"

After some difficulty I managed to register the drive on Formac's website. I had to fax my sales invoice to complete the process. They had a newer version of the Formac Devidion app (2.6.1) and there was a link for a firmware updater which was a dead link.

Since the Devideon case contained a Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-106D (MMC3) drive (B&H Photo sold it as a Devideon Superdrive A06) I checked Pioneer's website for information and could find little for a DVR-106 (nothing at all for specifically a DVR-106D). They did have a page (http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/hs/)describing a problem where certain drives would not recognize newer DVD media that is designed to burn faster. Unfortunately my specific model was not mentioned (a A03 and A04 were among them though) and the firmware updater it pointed to would only work on Macs containing internal drives.

That is as far as I have gotten and I'll certainly update you with further developments. If anybody has any ideas based on the information I've been able to provide so far, I'm certainly all ears. Thanks.

-Dave