is my NEC-1300A supposed to do this??

[nipster]

I have had a BUNCH of 2x media, and i FINALLY got through it all

got some ritek 4x disks and these are the first 4x disks i have tried, so i dont know if the burner is supposed to do this or not

basically the drive, when writing at 4x the burn light flases on and off, and i notice IDE activity doing the same

when burning at 2x, the burn light stayed on solid except when high disk activity on that ide channel then it would flash on and off every once in a while

the disks burn fine, but it is not THAT much faster than 2x, maybe 5-10 minutes for a whole disk

im using imgtoolburn (nero engine)

is something wrong, or do you just not get the real noticable effect when going from 2x to 4x media like you did on a cdr

a couple things, I AM using a ATA-33 cable on the drive and the burner is on a promise ATA-100 controller, not the onboard IDE controller channels (I have lots of IDE devices) if that makes any difference

[larva]

Your system and/or data source drive are not fast enough to keep the burner fed at 4X. The blinking is the buffer-underun technology halting the laser to keep the burn from failing. If you provide your burner with a faster hard disk and/or source optical drive the light will stay on and the burn times improve.

[nipster]

the source disk is a 7200 rpm seagate ata/100 with 8 megs cache

this cant be it

[lanman31337]

Are you running PIO or DMA? I noticed DMA runs so much faster and smoother. Right click on my computer and goto properties. Goto hardware tab, device manager. Do a properties on your ata devices, primary and secondary, and see if they're PIO or DMA.

[nipster]

it was DMA

I have traced the problem down to the promise ATA/100 tx2 IDE controller that this was connected to

I swapped IDE controllers with the dvd burner and my cdrw (was on secondary master) and now the cd burner is having the same problems...

I guess it is an issue with the piece of crap promise PCI IDE controller

[nipster]

Originally posted by lanman31337
Are you running PIO or DMA? I noticed DMA runs so much faster and smoother. Right click on my computer and goto properties. Goto hardware tab, device manager. Do a properties on your ata devices, primary and secondary, and see if they're PIO or DMA.

how can you do that with devices that are on a non-integrated IDE controller?

[meatneck]

i was always under the impression that controller cards were made for hard drives only..i have the same dvd burner as you and it has run flawlessly since the day i got it..ive yet to create a dvd coaster with it..i would hook the burner to the secondarty ide as a master with no slave if possible..thats how mine is hooked up..use your controller card for hard drives...