[MPlayer-users] Re: VCD and SVCD on Plextor PX-32TS PX-20TS SCSI drives no-go

[Diego Biurrun]

Matthias Andree wrote:
> I have difficulties playing VCD or SVCD on Plextor SCSI CD-ROM, tried
> MPlayer 0.90pre6 and pre10, with SuSE Linux 8.1 and FreeBSD 4.7-STABLE.
> I tried Linux 2.4.19+Plextor PX-32TS+Adaptec 2940UW Pro, FreeBSD
> 4.7+Plextor PX-20TS+Tekram DC-390U (SYM53C875 chip).

I have the same problem with a Plextor UltraPlex PX-32TS here on Debian 
Woody, Linux 2.4.20-ck1 with a Symbios 53c875 controller.  This seems to 
be an oddity of Plextor CD-ROMs.

> The same CDs are fine in a Toshiba SD-M1612

Same here with my Yamaha CRW4260.

> It turns out that Linux complains about ILLEGAL REQUEST, reading the
> data from CD is VERY slow.
> 
> 19:38:47 merlin kernel: sr0: CDROM (ioctl) reports ILLEGAL REQUEST.
> 19:38:59 merlin last message repeated 733 times

Same here.

> I have no ideas what is the real problem, if it's the request size or
> the non-MMC command set of the Plextor drives, looking at the source
> code of cdrdao or cdrecord might reveal useful information.

I have STFW a bit and found a few interesting things:

Here is a thread on linux-scsi describing the exact same problem, but 
unfortunately no conclusion was reached:

http://web.gnu.walfield.org/mail-archive/linux-scsi/2000-May/0010.html

Here are a few tools for reading VCDs:

http://140.132.1.204/OS/Linux/packages/X/viewers/readvcd/

With readvcd-0.3.tgz I could extract the VCD data and play it with 
mplayer (BTW, how do I make mplayer read from stdin?).  I've stared at 
the source a bit but I cannot see the difference in what mplayer and 
readvcd do yet.  I'll stare some more, but maybe some of you have a 
useful idea.  Both programs use the CDROMREADRAW ioctl to get the data 
if I am not mistaken, something must be different, though.

Diego