MakeCD FAQ

Table of Contents

Frequently asked questions

NOTE: This FAQ is beta and needs a complete rework. We are working on it.

Please read these questions and answers carefully, before asking any questions. Maybe your question is answered in this list.

Fragen zur Registrierung

Question:
Why do I have to send the registration fee to Katrin and not to you, the authors?
Answer:
We are busy with writing MakeCD-FAQ and if we made the registrations ourselves, it would take much more time than when Katrin's does this job. She's Angela's little sister and happy to earn some pocket money with this job. She especially enjoys nice persons at the phone and those letters which contain some nice words. ;-) Please note, that she can not answer technical questions. Please contact the authors directly, if you have such questions.

Question:
I'ld like to pay with my VISA card (or any other credit card). Do you accept such cards?
Answer:
Unfortunately, VISA (and other credit card institutes) has quite strong conditions. If we accepted VISA cards, we would need one VISA registration about every two days. We are far from that limit. So, payment with VISA is not possibly, sorry.

Question:
I want to get registered by transferring the money on a bank account. Please tell me an account number.
Answer:
We did not include our bank account in these documents on intention. Often, name and address do not appear properly on our bank statements, so we can't send you the registration. Furthermore it will need more time to register you, as we don't get our bank statements very often and since we would have to transfer your data to Katrin Schmidt, who goes ahead with your registration. If you really don't see any other possibility, you can write us an email about that, but other possibilities are really preferred!

Question:
I don't live in Germany, but I want to order MakeCD-FAQ anyway. How can I transfer the money to Germany?
Answer:
There are several possibilities:
Euro cheque in DM
That's most likely the most comfortable method for both of us. But please make sure you write an DM amount on the cheque and not an amount of your national currency. We can only cash euro cheques without additional fees if they are in DM. If they are in a different currency they cost us a lot of fees.
Cheque from German bank
Ask your bank if they have a partner bank in Germany. In this case, your bank can ask that partner bank in Germany to write a cheque in DM. If the cheque is from a German bank and written in DM, we don't have to pay additional fees for it. In your own interrest, ask your bank which fees you will have to pay for that!
Postal money order (German or international)
Go to your post office and ask them to send us the money in DM. That's a safe method. In parallel, you should send your registration form to us, but in case the post looses your registration form, make sure to note your whole address and the use on the postal money order. Then we can send you MakeCD-FAQ even in case your letter gets lost.
Cash
Of course, that's your own risk. Just go to your bank and get some German bank notes. Some persons then send the money in registered letters, but this also can't guarantee 100 % safety. However, usually the money reaches us. However, once we got a registered letter from Italy that did not contain the cash anymore. We don't know what happened here. We could not say if the letter has been opened or not (it was an air bag envelope) Maybe somebody stole the money out of the envelope.
Cheque from your bank
Cheques from outside Germany, which are none of those as described above, cost us -- depending -- about 20 DM each to cash. This amount of money is taken by our bank from the amount of money which you have written on the cheque. Therefore, you have to add about 20 DM to your cheque, if you want to use this method.

Questions about support/registration

Question:
Are there any mailing lists for MakeCD-FAQ?
Answer:
Yes, there are. Refer to the documentation of MakeCD-FAQ.

Question:
I have entered and saved my registration number and address. Nevertheless, the next time the MakeCD-FAQ registration requesters pops again. What's wrong?
Answer:
You are probably trying to register MakeCD-FAQ on a partition with AFS (AMIGA File Safe) with a version older than 16.16. Update AFS and the registration will work.

Question:
I am registered and want to get the latest version. Where can I obtain it from?
Answer:
If you have internet access, have a look at our homepage: http://makecd.core.de/. If you don't have internet access, use the register form to order a free demo version (you pay only shipping costs, which is 5 inside Europe and 10 DM outside Europe). This offer is limited to one disk per package. As soon as you enter your registration number in this demo version, you will have a registered version. BTW: You need not be registered to order the free (you pay only shipping costs) demo version. This offer also applies to all unregistered users who have old versions of MakeCD-FAQ and want to see what's new.

Questions about CD writer support

Question:
When will you add support for my CD writer XYZ?
Answer:
It is not easy to support all different CD writers, because there is no standard SCSI command set to access them. However, if you send us the command set of your CD writer, we will do our best in order to support it.

Question:
My CD writer often (or always) hangs after a while. The SCSI bus seems to be blocked. What can I do?
Answer:
Try if it helps to switch off Reselection or Synchronous Transfer Mode. There is a tool, called CTRLscsi (Archive name: HWGCTRLscsi.lha), which allows you to control Reselection of each Unit if you are using Commodore scsi.device V39/40. This tool is contained in most of the MakeCD-FAQ distributions.

Problems with some CD writers

Question:
I checked the audio on the CDs and at some random positions there was a burst of noise. Ouch. What happened?
Answer:
Somebody reported, that he had such a problem when a Zip drive is attached to the same SCSI bus. As soon as he removes his Zip, the noise disappears. Another person reported, that switching on reselection causes more noise than switching off reselection. The ideal option is to transfer data to RAM or to use a huge buffer. We have also heard that you should check the termination of your SCSI bus.

Question:
I use a JVC CD writer and have several problems. When will you release a new driver that is not beta?
Answer:
The problem is not really located in the driver, but in the buggy firmware of the JVC XR-W2010 V1.51. Please read more about that in doc/Compatibility. The most important problems are:
Reading delivers wrong data without error
If you have a Meeting Pearls III or IV, please mount your CD writer as a CD-ROM drive, insert the Meeting Pearls and click on "Deutsch" or "English". Now, an AmigaGuide document should appear which includes a link that allows you to check the CD for errors. Check the CD! If there are shown any errors without an appearing Read/Write error, your JVC CD writer delivers wrong data without error message!
Rejecting of write commands
Obviously, some CD writers reject the commands to write or fix a CD or session with ILLEGAL COMMAND. It might be that you can fix this by using a shorter SCSI bus (that worked in Patricks tests) or by using a different, better media (that has been reported by JVC). Try both!
Additional errors
Please read the JVC sections in doc/Compatibility.

Question:
I use my HP 4020 CD writer (or Philips CDD 2000, Grundig and other similar drives) in test mode. Everything works fine. But when I switch to real mode, a lot of CD-Rs get damaged after a while. MakeCD-FAQ reports a "write append error". This never happens in test mode, but very often without test mode. My friend has the same CD writer, but didn't have these problems when the CD writer was new. But now, he has the same problems. What's wrong here?
Answer:
Most likely, you have got one of these defective CD writers. Your drive needs to get fixed. A new firmware or a new version of MakeCD-FAQ won't help here. An internet user has reported, that HP seemed to be surprised, that he could write 200 CD-Rs without problems before getting that write append error. On Feb-25-1997, Alexander Becker <alex@enjoy.regio.net> reported in <5eu67r$1q0@enjoy.regio.net>, that HP sent him new CD-Rs, and that he got his money for the CD writer back, after he called them and faxed them the bill. Other users have exchanged their CD writers two or three times --- without staying success -- and finally got their money back. One of the MakeCD-FAQ betatesters reported that the following company does very good support for those defective CD writers: Repair 2000 Hardware Service GmbH
Werkstrasse 5
22844 Norderstedt
Germany
phone: +49 40 5225031 (ask for Mr. Peter and describe the error)
fax: +49 40 5264811 An internet guy has posted, how you can try to repair the CD writer by yourself, after the warranty is over, when you have the write append error. The authors of MakeCD-FAQ shall not be respondable for this text, but since it might help somebody, we decided to include it in this document. First a note: there's a different text in the German FAQ. The instructions of both texts differ -- but maybe both solutions work. We don't know. If you understand German, read that text, too. They add some grease there to the drive, there.

From: telsat@cybernet.it (Peter Marchionda)
Newsgroups: comp.publish.cdrom.hardware
Subject: CDD-2000 / HP 4021i "spring" FIX >>>>READ INSIDE<<<<
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 02:53:20 GMT
Message-ID: <330a6a70.13096048@news.supernews.com>

After reading all those horror stories about the Philips CDD-2000 drive, I considered myself fortunate. My CDD-2000 gave me no problems to set up. I made about 40-50 burns without any problems using Easy CD Pro 95 on a 120 MHz Pentium with 2 Quantum Fireball 3.2 GB HDs, 64 MB of EDO-RAM and a cheap ($30 !) NCR C810 compatible PCI SCSI controller. Only a couple of times I lost about 30-40 megs of space because I forgot to turn off the screen saver, and the session closed with a buffer underun error 4-5 minutes from the start of the recording.

But then.....disaster struck! After writing about 300 of 610megs, the session prematurely closed and I got an error code message of 171-00-50-00 (write or write append error)....I had just become a new member of the "COASTER CLUB".

I restored my configuration files (win.ini, system.ini, system.dat and user.dat) from a version saved when I was sure that the drive worked, and using the speed test function I tried again (and again, again and again......), but the test failed ALL the time between 300 and 330 megs with that same 171-... error code. Apparently it wasnt the computer or the software, but the drive itself!

I had read about "spring" problems with the CDD-2000, but nobody seemed to know exactly what could be done to fix the problem -- without sending it to the Philips service center. I wanted to send mine in too, but after they told me it would take from 25 to 40 days for the repairs, and not being very enthusiastic about purchasing a new drive, I decided to see myself what this "spring" problem was all about.

I opened the drive (you will need a small TORX driver set) and removed the cover, then removed the main board, carefully disconnecting the 5 cables (open the 3 flat cable connectors on both sides before pulling!!). The loading mechanism flap, on the top side of the drive was removed by removing the spiral spring at its center, and disengaging the hinge by sliding it sideways. The drive mechanism can then be removed by gently pulling it out, it is only held down with 4 rubber grommet shock absorbers. The controller board must be now removed by unscrewing the 4 Torx screws, disconnecting the spindle motor connector and unsoldering the wires of the laser carriage motor. After you remove the board you will be able to see the culprit. It is a straight piece of round spring steel wire (25.4mm/1.0" long , 0.25mm/0.01" in diameter) that pushes the rack towards the pinion gear. It was easily removed by just gently pulling it out with a SMALL pair of pliers. DO NOT disassemble anything else to remove it. The spring MUST be replaced , you can not bend it to increase the tension to fix it, as it must be perfectly straight. Replace it with a larger diameter wire; it should be between 0.40mm/0.016" and 0.50mm/0.02" in diameter of high quality spring steel, be sure it retains its shape if bent, and that its length is exactly the same as the original one. Now, I know I should not admit this, but I used a straightened piece of spring from an old ball-point pen! Piano or guitar wire should also work. Be careful to not deform the new spring when replacing it.

After the spring is replaced, verify that the carriage moves smoothly back and forth by applying 6 volts DC to the motor, inverting the voltage when it reaches the ends. The gear teeth should only jump when the carriage reaches the extreme ends and can not go any further. Dont burn the motor out or ruin the teeth by applying voltage for more than necessary. If the gear teeth jump in between, or if there is any play between the rack and pinion gears the spring tension is not high enough, probably caused by the spring being deformed when it was replaced or bad quality spring steel. Once you successfully perform this test, reassemble the drive and dont forget to reconnect the motor wires.....they should not cross each other. Reinstall the drive and try it using "Test recording speed".

DISCLAIMER: Absolutely DO NOT try to repair a CDD-2000 yourself....... unless....you meet ALL 5 of the following requirements:

  1. You are VERRRRRY experienced technician.
  2. You are very impatient and dont want to wait for the repair.
  3. You live in Antarctica and the nearest service center is very far away.
  4. You must record a CD NOW!
  5. Be sure that your drive has the "spring" problem; incomplete writes with the 171-00-50-00 error message (with Easy CD Pro 95 v 2)

Otherwise....send it to the Philips service center! Please dont E-mail bomb me if you mess your drive up... I warned you not to do it!!

Question:
My Philips CDD 2000 (or similar CD-Writer like HP SureStore 4020, Grundig CDR100 IPW, ...) is able to write CD-Rs and to read original CD-ROMs, but it can't read CD-Rs -- even if they are readable in my CD-ROM drive.
Answer:
We've heard about this problem which some Philips CD writers obivously have. You CD writer needs to get repaired. Send it back.

Question:
I want to rip an audio track with my Philips CDD 2600 CD-Recorder. The inner tracks can be read, but on the outer tracks I get error messages. What can I do?
Answer:
This is a common problem with Philips CDD 2600 and HP SureStore 6020 (and similar drives). Use the settings window to slow reading audio data down to single speed. This might help.

Question:
I have problems with my JVC XR-W2010 CD writer, especially with Audio CDs. What can I do?
Answer:
Make sure you have the lastest firmware version (V1.51 or better). Older versions made a lot of trouble with Audio CDs.

Question:
I have an A3000 (scsi.device V40.12) and a Yamaha CDR 100. MakeCD-FAQ works great. No problems at all. Seems to be a very good CD writer! However, my filesystem does not mount CDs from the CD writer. MakeCD-FAQ can read the data tracks, but my filesystem (BabelCDROMFS) says "not a DOS disk". The same CD-ROM works fine in my CD-ROM drive -- even with the same CD-ROM filesystem. Strange, isn't it?
Answer:
We have the same configuration and had the same problems. The Yamaha CDR 100 is really a very good CD writer, and the problem it has is not its fault. The scsi.device cannot read from the CD writer using trackdisk commands. Something seems to be broken. Maybe, the same error happens with A2091 and other Commodore host adapters. On the A3000, we could fix the problem by installing the new V43 scsi.device. If you don't want to install V43 scsi.device, you should use a filesystem that uses SCSI commands to communicate with the CD writer. For example AmiCDFS (shareware) is a good choice. Make sure the filesystem uses SCSI commands (refer to its documentation). Then, everything should work.

SCSI problems, SCSI hangups

Question:
I have big problems. Nothing seems to work. MakeCD-FAQ hangs up very often. What can I do?
Answer:
Try the following things -- of course, use test mode!

Question:
When writing a CD-R the CD writer suddenly stops, but MakeCD-FAQ doesn't show an error description. I can select abort, but nothing happens. The computer doesn't crash and I can still use the SCSI bus. Is this a known bug?
Answer:
We have encountered this problem with a Oktagon V6.8 when writing audio tracks to a Philips CDD2000 V1.26 with enabled disconnect. It was reported for other controllers, too. It is a bug in the controller or the target drive: MakeCD-FAQ is waiting for a write request that is never completed because reconnection failed. MakeCD-FAQ can hardly do anything about this. You should disable disconnect for your target drive and/or try sequential reading/writing.

Question:
I have a Philips CD writer (or Grundig, HP SureStore or other compatible CD write, refer to Compatibility list). Writing in test mode works fine. But when I write a CD without test mode, I kill CD-Rs all the time when I am almost finished. The error is "write append error" or "buffer underrun". Why that?
Answer:
We heart several times about that problem. A user who seemed to be quite good informed told us, that this is a common problem with Philips and compatible CD writers. You CD writer has to get fixed. Contact your dealer.

Question:
While writing a CD, sometimes my SCSI bus hangs up. This happens in both, test mode and real writing. Is there anything I can do agains this?
Answer:
Obviously, your CD writer and/or your SCSI hostadapter have some problems. Sorry, we can't help you there. Have a look at our Compatibility list -- maybe a user with a similar configuration had the same problem and can tell you a solution. You might want to switch off reselection. There's a small tool for Commodore V39/V40 scsi.devices included in most MakeCD-FAQ distributions. Also, you can try to switch off parallel reading/writing in the MakeCD-FAQ settings window. Furthermore, you can choose a small (e.g. 32 KB) chunk size. If nothing helps, contact your dealer. There's a problem in either your SCSI hostadapter or your CD writer.

Question:
I have buffer underrun errors. What can I do?
Answer (from John Hendrikx <john@globalxs.nl>): I
experienced buffer underruns when reselection on my CD writer was off. This meant that the hard disk couldn't do anything while the CD writer is using the bus (which can be quite a while). Putting on Reselection on both the CD writer and the HD resulted in SCSI errors (sometimes), but only having it on for the CD writer works fine and won't make much of a performance difference as the HD (which has reselection off) won't use the bus for an extended period of time anyway. I've succesfully burned CD's at 4x speed (!!) with a Yamaha CD writer when I still had a 030 22MHz system with only 8 MB of FastRAM. The data came from an IDE drive (I think that the seperate IDE controller made things a bit easier). I was pushing the limits with this system though: at one time I did get buffer underruns this way, and it turned out that I had to do a ReOrg on the source drive before it would work fast enough :-) Anyway, a few tips: BTW, turning reselection off for your harddrives also improves performance (atleast when using one of them at the time :-)). I've had almost a 20% performance boost when I turned it off for my Seagate drive (it didn't handle reselection correctly anyway -- it was the cause of some lockups I experienced at one time, not my writer).

Questions about Audio CDs

Question:
When copying an audio CD, I get a buffer underflow. Obviously my 8x speed CD-ROM drive is not fast enough, although my CD writer writes only in double speed. What's wrong here?
Answer:
Many CD-ROM drives read CDDA data in single speed only. In order to copy an audio track, you should switch your CD writer back to single speed --- or use temporary files.

Question:
How can I set the length of the pauses between the tracks?
Answer:
This is not possible with any AMIGA CD writer software at the moment (27.12.96). MakeCD-FAQ uses the track-at-once mode, too, i.e. it only sends the pure track data to the writer and leaves calculating checksums and writing of pauses and table of contents to the writer. This has the advantage that writing can suspended unlimitedly between tracks and multisession would be possible. Selecting the length of the pauses would only be possible in the disc-at-once mode. MakeCD-FAQ will offer both modes alternatively as soon as possible.

Question:
Is there a possibility to copy a CD with multiple tracks without pauses despite of the fact that writing will add pauses?
Answer:
It is possible, however, the copy will consist of one large track. You have to select the first track of the original CD as source and set its length to the total length of all tracks (= "end last track" - "start first track" + 1). MakeCD-FAQ will read all tracks in one piece.

Questions about Data CDs

Question:
I have read that MakeCD-FAQ is able to write AMIGA Protection Bits and file comments. I wrote an image file with Rock Ridge and AMIGA Attributes turned on -- but when I mount this image, all files have standard protection bits. The script bits are still lost. What is What is wrong here?
Answer:
You need a filesystem that supports AMIGA Protection Bits. The freely distributable AmiCDFS2 supports them since version 2.30. AsimCDFS supports them starting with version 3.7 (note that there's an old version string "AsimCDFS 3.6 (05.11.96)" in L:AsimCDFS). The author of CacheCDFS has promised to follow soon and has a working beta version.

Question:
I have created an ISO image of my data. But after I've written it to my CD-R, I noticed that you have put MakeCD-FAQ into the image, too. I am a registered user, and I really don't like that! Please turn that off!
Answer:
We didn't put MakeCD-FAQ into your ISO image on intention. You did it yourself. ;-) When you used the ISO settings to select the paths, that are supposed to be written to the image, you pressed the "New" button too often. So empty entries appeared in the list. This causes MakeCD-FAQ to scan the directory "", which usually is the directory that contains MakeCD-FAQ. So just make sure you don't have empty entries in that list.

Question:
Every time when I am going to burn a AMIGA CD, I browse through all directories to locate all directory levels that are more than eight levels deep, in order to avoid creating a corrupt image. When can I expect such a function in MakeCD-FAQ?
Answer:
Don't worry -- even if you use more than eight directory levels, your image won't be corrupt. On the AMIGA, such images are even readable without any problems. Just DOS PCs are not able to change into those deep directories. But that's not a problem for most of the AMIGA users. However, we are going to implement such a function, as soon as we find time for it.

Question:
OK, now I know that the limit with the eight directory levels is not important for the AMIGA. But what's the restriction on the AMIGA? How many directory levels can I put on CD?
Answer:
There is no such limit on the AMIGA. But of course, directories are not easy to handle (very long pathnames etc.) if they are too deep. Many applications will probably crash or do wrong things, when they have to handle such long path names. You should be able to write any AMIGA directory with all its subdirectories on CD-R. Starting at some depth (undefined, because this is subject to change), MakeCD-FAQ will run out of stack though, and your AMIGA will crash. But this requires really very deep directories.

Question:
I want to create a multivolume CD, by just copying the data tracks of some empty CDs on one single destination CD-R. I have tried this by simply copying the tracks one after another and by fixing the session between the tracks -- without success. Just the 1st track is readable. What's wrong?
Answer:
Every multi session or multi volume track, which is not the very first track of the CD-R, has to be created especially for this CD-R, because every data track looks different -- depending on the block number on CD-R, where the data track is going to be stored. You can not write a track, which has been created for basis block 0, to a different block on the CD-R. MakeCD-FAQ warns against this from V2.0 on, but previously tracks were written without protest, because baseblocks were not yet supported at all.

Question:
Now I have created a multi volume CD. I tried some CD-ROM filesystems, but I either can see the very first or the very last volume. Where are my other volumes?
Answer:
Unfortunatly, this still is a problem with multi volume: there are only a few filesystems, which suppurt this at the moment. However, multi volume updates for AmiCDFS, CacheCDFS and AsimCDFS already have been announced. Stand by.

Question:
My Workbench says, that e.g. Meeting Pearls II uses 650 MB. But when I ask DirOpus to calculate the size in bytes, I don't get 680,525,824 bytes as expected, but about 50 MB less. What happened to those 50 MB?
Answer:
A CD has to be written with blocksize 2048 bytes. This means that you loose 1024 bytes in average for each file, because file length usually are not a multiple of 2048 bytes. If there are 50,000 files in your image, this sums up to 50 MB. Now you can count how many files (and directories) DirOpus counts. By the way, ISO9660 wastes only little space for management data (directory structure etc.).

Questions about CD backups and copies

Question:
How can I backup my CDs (also some with several tracks)?
Answer:
Go to the settings to the audio part. Enter 0 start blocks and 152 pause blocks. Go back to the main window and append the whole CD using the menu. If necessary (depends on the performance of your system), activate temporary images now. Then, write the CD. With these settings you can successfully copy a lot -- but not all CDs.

Various questions about burning CDs

Question:
I cannot fix the CD-R! I have fixed all sessions and now I want to fix the CD-R, but this does not work.
Answer:
You can only fix the CD-R, if there are tracks written to the last session. By fixing a session, a new session (without any tracks) is opened. That's why you can not fix the CD-R, if you previously fixed the session and did not add any further tracks. By fixing a session the Lead In of this session is being written. Beside other things, it contains the track list of this session, which is required by CD-ROM drives to find the tracks. That's why unfixed sessions are unreadable on CD-ROM drives. Furthermore, the Lead In contains information, where the next session starts -- even if it is still empty. When fixing a CD-R, things are the same, except that there is a note that no more sessions will follow instead of information where the next session starts. Since a drive browses through all sessions when it reads the track list, it will -- if the CD-R is not fixed -- stumble at the last session, because it tries to read unreadable data (blocks on CD-R that are still unused). That's not a bad thing, however it slows down reading the track contents. Therefore, we recommend to fix the CD-R if you are sure you don't want to add any further tracks.

Question:
When I try to choose my CD writer in the device requester, MakeCD-FAQ crashes. My friend has this problem only sometimes and another friend never has this problem.
Answer:
We could not locate such a bug. We connected the Plextor CD writer to the A3000 and started HDToolBox. This also caused a crash while HDToolBox was scanning the SCSI bus. MakeCD-FAQ tries to find trackdisk compatible devices using NSD. If a device is buggy, it can cause a crash. Please use NSDQuery, which is located in Heinz Wrobel's NSDPatch archive, to locate that device, and tell us its name and version number. Just type in NSDQuery CHECKALL. If possible, send us a copy of that crashing device. Thanks to NSDPatch, you can patch the device in a way that does no longer cause crashes, without loosing any features. If you cannot choose the device using the device requester, you can activate the MakeCD-FAQ program icon and choose "Info" from the workbench menu. Then, edit the tooltypes manually. Enter the correct values for WRITE_DEVICE, WRITE_UNIT, WRITE_DRIVER, READ_DEVICE, READ_UNIT and READ_DRIVER. You must not supply the .device suffix for the #?_DRIVER tooltypes.

Question:
I have written a CD, but it seems to be damaged. My CD-ROM drive cannot access it. :-(
Answer:
You have to fix the session or the CD-R in order to access the CD in your CD-ROM drive. Please do take care that you don't use any cracked/virus infected versions of MakeCD-FAQ, because some cracker are very lame and destroy more than they think they "enabled". Do not blame us for non-working cracked/virus infected versions of MakeCD-FAQ.

Question:
I have created a data CD-ROM using MakeCD-FAQ. Although no errors were shown, the image is obviously quite damaged, because some icons are missing on Workbench and a lot of archives on that CD-R are damaged, too. I tried a different version of MakeCD-FAQ and got a 2nd damaged CD-R. Sometimes, the disk icon of that CD even does not appear on Workbench, and sometimes even the filesystem crashes. Didn't you test at all? My configuration is: A4000, Yamaha CDR 100, Toshiba 4101, Noname CD-Rs.
Answer:
I guess you tested the CD-Rs on your Toshiba CD-ROM drive. Toshiba CD-ROM drives (and CD-ROM drives of some other companies, too) are known to cause problems with some special CD-Rs. The same CD-Rs run without any problems on other drives. Try it! Your "damaged" CD-R will most likely run without any problem on some other CD-ROM drive. Read the "Compatibility" file. It contains the name of some CD-Rs which seem to be good.

Question:
I tried to copy a CD to CD-R. I read from my CD-ROM drive and wrote directly to my CD writer, without using a temporary file. This worked fine for a while. My CD-ROM drive reads in 12x speed and my CD writer writes in 4x speed. But suddenly, the CD-ROM drive delivered the data very slow and I got a buffer underrun. Another coaster. :-( Please fix this.
Answer:
There's nothing to be fixed. CD-ROM drives usually slow down when they have to read from a scratched surface. After passing the scratch, some of them go back to full speed, others stay at the slow speed. That's what happened in your case. Sorry. You should either get a firmware update for your CD-ROM drive which fixes that (if available) or you have to use a temporary file for scratched CDs. Another thing that could help is reducing the speed of your CD writer.

Question:
Transfer rate
My CD-ROM drive is faster than it is supposed to be -- at least it seems so. The MakeCD-FAQ writing window shows very fast transfer rates for it. Why?
Answer:
MakeCD-FAQ measures the time from sending a read request to the CD-ROM drive until the read request comes back with the required data. That's all. There's nothing magic in it. However, many drives are using intelligent buffer methods, and during the time MakeCD-FAQ is not accessing the drive, they fill their cache with some data -- hoping it's the data which the application will try to read next time. Often, that's really the data which MakeCD-FAQ will request next time, and then the drive can send the data directly from the buffer to MakeCD-FAQ and does not have to access the CD at all. That's why it is seems to be so fast. If there were no pauses for the drive between two requests, which can be used to fill the internal buffer, it would be slower.

Question:
The idea of using the track name as the filename for the ISO image filename is good and saves time but these files are always written into PROGDIR: unless the path is changed manually. When dealing with many ISO files this is cumbersome. Could you please add a feature to allow a default directory to be set?
Answer:
You mean the "base dir" string gadget at the upper left corner of the main window? Just enter your working directory there.

Question:
I want to read a CD with data and audio tracks. However, at the end of a data track MakeCD-FAQ reports a read error!?
Answer:
When listing the contents of a CD MakeCD-FAQ only tries to remove the pause at the end of a track from the track's length since V2.0. If you use the length suggested by older versions you will get a read error as soon as MakeCD-FAQ reaches the pause after a data track, because pauses can only be read after audio tracks. You can either reduce the size of the track before starting reading, or you can ignore the error by selecting "Use File" in the requester reporting the error -- or update to V2.0 :-)

Question:
Reading and writing of data tracks works fine even with disconnect, but I get into trouble when using other track types. Why that?
Answer:
Some controllers increase performance by making assumptions for example about the block size they are to transfer, e.g. block size is a power of two or an even multiple of x bytes (x = 32, 64, ...). These assumptions are wrong for such unusual block sizes like 2352 bytes (audio track) and the controller software fails.

Question:
With which CD writers can I use the repair option in the "Target CD-R" window? Which kind of damage can I repair?
Answer:
When the writing is interrupted by a loss of power, then the Philips writers and compatibles offer a command to make the CD-R useable again --- however, only if the CD-R was not removed from the drive yet! This is the feature the Philips drivers use. The Yamaha writers don't support this kind of repair. In case the data stream is interrupted while the writer is still working, most drives finish the last track automatically. The track is simply too short.

Question:
I accidently removed a small label attached on a CD-R, together with a small piece of gold surface on the label side. Now there is a see-through hole near the centre of the CD-R. Can I put some paint on it to cover the hole? I've tried to stick back the piece but the disc is still unreadable. Any other way to rescue the disc?
Answer:
Nope, it's a coaster. Removing a label often removes the reflective layer, which destroys a CD-R.

Question:
I just have updated MakeCD-FAQ. But the new version obviousely does not work, because one of the .module files has a wrong version number. At least, a MakeCD-FAQ requester tells me that.
Answer:
Of course, it could happen that we release a buggy update. But usually this misbehaviour is caused by something different. Both, the .module and the .driver files are libraries (although you NEVER should copy them to LIBS:). This means, that they stay in your memory after you left MakeCD-FAQ, until a memory allocation flushes them. So they are reloaded only if that's really needed when you restart MakeCD-FAQ. If you have started an old version of MakeCD-FAQ, before starting the new version, this misbehaviour might happen. Just reset your AMIGA -- after that everything should work as usually. MakeCD-FAQ V2.0 tries to do a memory flush itself.

GUI related questions

Question:
The online help of MakeCD-FAQ causes trouble with CycleToMenu and MagicCX. What can I do against this?
Answer:
You should not install hacks. Well, probably you do not want to remove these hacks, do you? So after you have understood MakeCD-FAQ, we suggest you to use the menu to turn off bubblehelp to avoid the problem. Note that the bubble help is from triton.library and so we cannot change its behaviour.

Question:
I want to save the window sizes or open the windows on a public screen. Is this possible?
Answer:
Since the windows are from triton.library, you can use the Triton preferences editor to achieve both. You don't have to register Triton for this -- but of course Stefan Zeiger would be pleased if you do so nevertheless :-) You can find the full Triton system with preferences editor on Stefan Zeiger's homepage http://home.pages.de/~szeiger/. See doc/Triton.readme for more details. Here's a part of the Triton documentation:

If you want to register, please send DM20, US$15 or an equal amount in any other valid currency to me. See Support, for addresses.

Send money by EuroCheque (only in German Marks (DM)!), postal(!) money order or cash! It's impossible for me to cash in foreign cheques, even if the amount is in DM.

EMail:
triton-support@laren.rhein-main.de
Mail:
Stefan Zeiger
Seligenstädter Weg 24
D-63796 Kahl
Germany
Voice:
+49-6188-900712

Questions about the settings

Question:
What is the difference between sequential and parallel reading/writing? Which one should I use?
Answer:
MakeCD-FAQ 1.0 always used the parallel method: Two independent processes read or write simultaneously. In the sequential mode buffers of the same size are read and written alternating. The parallel method is more demanding in regard to the system's reliability. It works only well if disconnect is supported properly and is enabled for both harddrives, CD-ROM drive and CD writer or different controllers are used for source and target. The sequential method avoids several potential flaws of controllers. It has another drawback: When a read request is delayed, the next write request cannot start and the data stream is interrupted even if the buffer is not empty, i.e. the buffer cannot compensate temporary fluctuations of read performance any more.

This document was generated on 20 July 1997 using the texi2html translator version 1.51.