Pioneer DVR-109: only Multi-word DMA mode 2...

[Patrice Brousseau]

Hello,

Well, I followed all the advices i found here and on other CD/DVD forums but my brand new Pioneer DVR-109 is stuck in Multi-word DMA mode 2 (only in Windows though, because the BIOS recognize the drive as ATA-66!)

So, to resume:

- I flashed the firmware to 1.40
- I have a 80 pin cable (I even swapped for another and same thing). Even tried a standard cable: BIOS says "ATA-33" but windows stuck again at Multi-Word!
- I deleted several times the DVD and the IDE channel in device manager
- I tried some registry tricks documented on this forum
- Jumper on the drive is set correctly (master). I even tried in Cable select but no change
- I installed the latest 4-in-1 drivers for my chipset (Via KT133A).
- The drive is alone on the cable (no slave device)
- I have the latest BIOS for my mainboard
- I know that' not a good thing but I tried the drive on my integrated Promise controller to look for a difference of speed. The results in Nero CDCHECK (reading a DVD-R) were about the same on Promise or on standard IDE. Each time, the burst speed was around 13 mb/s... Ouch!

The guy where I bought it says to me on the phone: "You have an old chipset so it is surely a compatibility problem. Anyway, with that chipset, you won't be able to go more than 8x". Why then my HDD (on IDE1) is set to UDMA5 in the BIOS and in Windows and transferring at 45mb/s ?

I don't know what to think or what to do now. The thing that bug me the most is the fact that the BIOS set the drive correctly but Windows refuses to do the same.

Ah, I also tried the VIA Miniport drivers (to replace the Microsoft generic ones) and I have the choice to update the drive in UDMA66 with this driver but applying the changes and rebooting does nothing again!

So, any solutions other than returning the drive and picking one from a different brand...

My machine:

MSI K7T Turbo LE (Via KT133a chipset)
Athlon XP 1600+

[Patrice Brousseau]

Ok. I also tried to change the MasterTimingDevideMode to UDMA66 (8010) in the registry. It shows UDMA4 when I go in the device manager but when I reboot, it is back to Multi-word dma 2 again. There's nothing about it in the event log too.

[dodecahedron]

tried re-installing Windows ?

[Patrice Brousseau]

tried re-installing Windows ?

No. Maybe I'll try with a fresh new install. I just made an image of the drive this weekend... If it doesn't work, I reinstall the backup and return the drive.

[Patrice Brousseau]

Arghh!

I did a clean install of Windows and upon the final reboot, I checked the device manager and... multi-word dma mode 2. Just WinXP with generic drivers and nothing else so there are two possibilities:

- Compatibility problems with my chipset or my mainboard
- Defective DVD unit: I called at the store where I bought it and they told me to bring them the drive and they will test it on one of their comp to see if the behavior remain the same. If it is ok on their machine, I guess I'll have to keep the drive and live with it... I understand that there will be a possibility to exchange the Pioneer only if it is defective...

[Guzo]

I know it will sound strange.

Once i put my optical to 2nd channel and dvd could work in dma mode
when i put on 1st channel everything worked fine.

Try switching cables on mobo

C Ya

[Patrice Brousseau]

Once i put my optical to 2nd channel and dvd could work in dma mode
when i put on 1st channel everything worked fine.

UPDATE: I got it!!! Thanks. Pioneer now on Primary IDE as master with a CD-ROM drive slave. Reading UDMA4 in Windows now...

HDD1 alone on Secondary IDE and running at UDMA5 like it is supposed to be.

One little annoying thing though: I had a throughput (max burst rate if you prefer) of around 80-81 mb/s when testing my Maxtor HD on Primary IDE. Now, on Secondary IDE, I get 74-75 mb/s. This is with HDTach and HDTune. I verified that it wasn't the cables by swapping them and I even retested the HDD on Primary IDE.

Definitely a loss of bandwidth on Secondary IDE... Strange old motherboard...