[ltp] DVD not working

[Matt Graham]

On Friday 19 January 2007 14:15, after a long battle with technology, 
Richard Neill wrote:
> RICHARD CARTER wrote:
>> The MATSHITA UJDA745 DVD/CDRW on my refurbished T40 Thinkpad seems
>> faulty. It will read: CD-RW data discs, audio discs and photo
>> discs. But it will not read DVDs containing movies which can be
>> read on another computer running Mandriva 2007.  [It also won't write 
>> CD-RWs.]
> Sounds like your DVD drive has never had its region code initialised.
> Under Linux, just run "regionset".

This could be the problem with DVD-ROMs.  Check the region first, and 
set it if it's not set.  Of course, when I saw the same problem with 
the DVD-+RW on my refurbed T42p, it was due to some sort of weird bug 
in the distro kernel.  A vanilla kernel made everything work fine.

> To test the CD-RW, I suggest you run knoppix with "toram"  (assuming
> you have 2GB of memory)

That's a huge assumption to make.  2G isn't as much as it used to be, 
but it's not insanely common either.

Since the OP said the drive would read but not write CD-RW media, it's 
probable that he's not using a type of CD-RW that the drive can write.  
There are at least 4 different types of CD-RW media, called multi-speed 
(4x), high-speed (8x, I think), ultra-high speed (16x or 32x, I think), 
and ultra high speed+ (faster).  See what your drive supports with 
cdrecord -prcap , use appropriate media.

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