Plextor 708 does not work in DMA 2

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers Plextor Writer
#1

Hi

at first sorry for my terrible english, i hope you understand everything.

I have a Plextor 708 DVD burner. But it doesn´t work in dma mode. Everytime when i change from PIO to DMA my system goes down. I have changed the IDE Cable,nothing happend. I changed the IDE Driver Software,nothing happend. When i burn a CD/DVD my buffer goes up and down. I need for a DVD 30minutes by 8x. What can i do??? For your help thanx

I have a ABIT NF7-S Rev 2.0 Board

#2

Have you tried reading the FAQ? There is a lot of information in there that deals with DMA. You can also read through these search results. Please report back if you need more help.

#3

Yes , i read the FAQ. But nothing helps. Maybe my IDE Port is not okay. i

#4

I had a lot of problem with the plextor 708A trying to get it to perform well on 700Mhz high end IBM machine. It’s a bit old but a very high end computer system for multidmedia. I had no problem getting the drive to play DVD well even at 1280x1024 resolution on number nine video card 16MB (S3 Savage chip). DMA was handled properly under Windows 98SE.

When I run Win2000 it’s bad, slow, jerky and distorted sounds even though DMA is shown as enabled in the device manager->IDE channle->advanced setting. So I wasted nearly one day to get it to perform decently, but still not to satisfaction. Here are what I did

  • Place the drive on a separate IDE channel in Ultra DMA mode, no competition at all for bandwidth
  • Bring the resolution of the screen down to 1024x768, 32 bits colours or keep it at 1280x1024 but only 16 bits colours. The smoothest performance is at 800x600 and 32 bits colours. Well, that’s my only dissatisfaction. I cannot have max resolution and good performance in video image quality and smooth playback.

The two actions above make a lot of difference on Win2000. So if you have similar problem, try these. I suppose only old computer with 700Mhz CPU or less would have problem. The manufacturer mentions minimum 800MHz CPU, that says something. I think they mean 1200Mhz for decent performance. You can surely use Win98SE and be sure that you get better performance but then you cannot do anything else while DVD is playing.

#5

@all

my prob was, that the pins at the backside from the plextor where i but the IDE Cable
were broken(two pins). I send the plextor to the support,and in 7 days i get a new Burner. That´s service.

Sorry for my terrible english

#6

I am still not completely happy with Win2000 and Plextor 708a performance. It works so much better under Win98se. Also if the system has been up for 1/2 day doing a lot of work, nero performs a check on IO speed adn HD speed prior to burning, the system is too slow and Nero will use a much lower speed for burning as it thinks the system cannot support 8x. This has nothing to do with the Plextor. I suspect it’s a problem with Windows 2000.

I have not tried WinXP. But Windows 98 is a the clear winner in real time performance in this case. Any one has same experience? I often have to reboot Win2000 fresh to get the performance up and still not good enough on thi slow machine. I would not consider 700Mhz high end machine is a slow machine!

#7

I run windows 2000 pro on my pc which is a PENT 4 2.4 GHZ CHIP and I have no problems or slow down while I use Nero to burn. It seems your problem is that your pc is too slow. A 700mhz system is not fast enough to use the Plextor 708A. If you look at what the minimum specs it says 700mhz or above. You’re using the minimum speed. If windows 98 works for you then continue to use it. Or get a faster pc. :slight_smile:

#8

I suggest to look in the web for diagnostic softwares like AMIDIAG, MICRO-SCOPE, etc. to check your mainboard

#9

Windows 2000 and Windows XP (more than Win2000) run slow even in modern computers (Pentium 4 2,8GHz, 1024Mb RAM) …
you can imagine on a 700MHz !

#10

Thanks I’ll do the check. My computer is not that bad as it’s a very high end IBM designed for Multimedia at its time, it came with DVD player. I install 512M of expensive ECC RAM as well. The graphics card was also very highend of its time. So it’s quite fast and extremely stable. I guess Win98se exploits it so well that’s why DVD works like a dream on Win98. But Windows NT, 2000, XP are all pretty poor after running for a while (I often hybernate it then wake up). Only a reboot helps somewhat.

#11

I had a similar problem with a Toshiba SD-M1502. I changed a BIOS option from “APIC” to “PIC” and changed the machine type in Win2k from “ACPI Uniprocessor PC” to “Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC”, all stutter problems were gone.

Hint: change the machine type first, when Windows asks to reboot, enter the BIOS and change the PIC/APIC option before Windows starts again.

BTW: If your BIOS doesn’t have the option to change PIC/APIC mode, you don’t have to change the machine type in Windows (it’s no use, then).

#12

Originally posted by dmaivn
[B]I had a lot of problem with the plextor 708A trying to get it to perform well on 700Mhz high end IBM machine. It’s a bit old but a very high end computer system for multidmedia. I had no problem getting the drive to play DVD well even at 1280x1024 resolution on number nine video card 16MB (S3 Savage chip). DMA was handled properly under Windows 98SE.

When I run Win2000 it’s bad, slow, jerky and distorted sounds even though DMA is shown as enabled in the device manager->IDE channle->advanced setting.
[/B]

Trash the Number Nine vid card. They’ve gone out of business, and replacing the card with something ATI based will provide much better driver support in 2k/XP. Radeon chips also have hardware motion-compensation, which greatly improves DVD playback. The Savage chips have had some major driver glitches in the past. You don’t need an expensive ATI card, one based on the Radeon 7500 or 9200 should do quite well.

P.S. How much RAM do you have?