IDE settings (WAS: [MPlayer-users] DVD playback)

[Gábor Lénárt]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2001 at 11:12:56AM +0000, Frank Boehme wrote:
> Actually, I found that on my system the proper IDE flags have more
> influence than -cache, especially when playing DVD. So hdparm helps,
> until I get a dma timeout or some other event which resets the IDE
> device. After such a soft reset, dma access and unmasking other IRQs is
> disabled and the movie begins to jerk. Now, hdparm has the -k parameter
> which tells the device to keep its flags over a soft reset but my CDROM
> does not adhere this. So I think, I will try to set up some sort of
> watchdog that watches /proc/ide/mydevice/settings for changes or catches
> the kernel messages (hdx: dma timeout...) and fires up hdparm with the
> right switches whenever this happens.

If you got more 'dma timeout' like messages this means that your drive/IDE
controller can't handle dma transfers very well, some IDE cable problem
(one of my friends had got similar problems with windows. after he changed
the cable it worked), or the media can't be read (it has sketches at the
surface or so). The latter can be checked: if the media can be read without
problems with PIO mode (no dma) this is not the case I've described here about
sketches or likes.

- Gabor