FC4 DVD playback choppy

[rhodes187]

Well I've gotten myself up to a usable system on my Dell Inspiron 9300 (with the help of members of this board!). I am now only having problems with DVD playback. I have installed all the necessary libraries (libdvdread, libdvdplay, libdvdnav, and libdvdcss). Now the problem is the playback is very choppy (and sound). I know this is due to DMA beng set off on my DVD player. However, I cannot set it to on (using hdpam -d1 /dev/hdc). I get the following error:

/dev/hdc:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
using_dma = 0 (off)
D56A
Running lspci issues the following for my controller:
Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 03)

Is there a way to force my dvd player to DMA? Its a Sony DVD+/-RW DW-D56A

[ge_bil]

You need to run hdparm as root.

[rhodes187]

I was doing it as root. For whatever reason it does NOT let me put DMA on the drive. An hdparm -I /dev/hdc shows the following:

/dev/hdc:

ATAPI CD-ROM, with removable media
Model Number: SONY DVD+/-RW DW-D56A
Serial Number:
Firmware Revision: PDS3
Standards:
Supported: CD-ROM ATAPI-2
Configuration:
DRQ response: 50us.
Packet size: 12 bytes
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(cannot be disabled)
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 *udma2
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=227ns IORDY flow control=120ns


Looks like it should, but it does not. I've read it's something to do with my Intel disk IDE controller. Sound familiar to anyone? Thanks in advance...

[chili555]

This

*udma2

that lil asterisk there, indicates your drive is running UDMA2. What does hdparm /dev/hdc tell us?

[steve941]

I have the same problem, in fact I have the same DVD writer and computer...
I know the problem and filed a bug report, I don't know how to fix but..
The problem is the drive is connected through an SATA controller and the kernel obviously doesn't have support for SATA DVD drives yet. The bug people said somthing like the drive should really be /dev/sd0 (serial device 0 im guessing). I've read about recompiling the kernel, but also read it's not stable so I think i'll wait for the developers to add it in the kernel.

[ge_bil]

I also think this had to do with the kernel driver for the specific controller.
I did a google search and found this page: http://www.meltin.net/hacks/linux/t43.html
where this person had the same problem but he recompiled the kernel to get it working.

[rhodes187]

I previously did make the change (to libata.h) and recompiled the kernel. My laptop became extremely unstable after making the change (it would lock up about every hour or so, especially if I added and removed media from the CD ROM). Any guess on the ETA for a "real" fix?

[ge_bil]

Check this page also: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...ata+cdrom.html

It says there is some kind of conflict with another driver which should be disabled.

[steve941]

Actually, I downloaded the 2.6.12.3 kernel source from kernel.org and It might work..
I'm not done compiling/installinig it but I configured it with more sata support and scsi support as well as ntfs read and write along with my 915 chipset support, I'm still configuring it, but It might work out...

[ge_bil]

You don't want to enable ntfs write! It is still experimental.

[montecarloss]

Has anyone fixed the choppy video?

[markf909]

I downloaded a vanilla 2.6.12.3 kernel and applied the patches from here.
http://www.rtr.ca/dell_i9300/

DVD playback is perfect with DMA enabled.
I also followed the guide on that page and have every feature of my
Inspiron 6000 working. I am running Fedora 3 but the issue of DMA
not working is a bogus hardware conflict so this solution should work
for Fedora 4.