c2d

Hi,

We have a CD/DVD burning tower that is connected through a bridge to a pci firewall card.

There are four drives on the tower.

We had some issues with the unit and have taken it apart and put it back together, but now the drives will not burn.

When we run Nero the process will start, but after 1% or so, the drive will open and the disc is ejected.

We have another burning software (disc juggler), and it does the same thing.

These drives are only two or three months old- if not less.

We use DVDs/Cds that have the white top so we can print on them.

We also have an ink jet printer (not currently working) that sits on top of the tower to print the DVDs/Cds once the burning process is complete.

We have tried to change the PCI card, to reinstall XP and all the burning software and drivers onto the connected computer. We have tried to change some of the connecting wires.


But still we have no luck.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

dai

check you put the drives back in their original position or the jumpers will be set wrong

c2d

The drivers are in a tower that are connected via a bridge to a firewire. (I wrote in the previous e-mail firewall- I meant firewire). We never touched the jumpers.

the computer recognized the drives, but they just stop working after a short while.

we will check the jumper, but I do not think this is the problem.

I will let you know a little later the results.

We did try however to connect the drives via a usb cable and they work that way.

thank you.

dai

is there any yellow alongside the firewire entry in the device manager

c2d

I checked the disc manager and there is no yellow line. I am attaching a photo.

from what I understand of the way this is all set us:

we have a tower with four dvd drives. each drive has a bridge with a firewire connection that connects two drives together to two firewire cables that run to the firewire pci card we have connected to the computer.

we have tried to change the pci cards and the firewire cables.

we have ordred a firewire to usb cable to try to see if it will work via usb and not firewire.

we think there is something amiss in by the bridge or firewire connections.

Attached Images

ssss.JPG (122.0 KB, 4 views)

BCCOMP

Hi,
Do you have any errors in the Device Manager (Not Disc Management)?
Are these DVD-Rom drives IDE or Sata?
What is the make and model of the bridge you have?
Bill

c2d

there was no error last time we checked, but now there is an error. (see picture).

the dvd drive is IDE.

the bridges came with the tower we ordered. the tower was fully assembled when we ordered it- with an arm and printer. after thousands of burnings, we have had to change the dvd drives.

on the bridge it says:

firewire to atapi/ide bridge.

there is a connector for the power and for a slave ide. there are two firewire ports.

we have four bridges. one bridge is connected to a second bridge and then both are connected via one firewire to the pci card.

thank you.

Attached Images

eeee.JPG (115.3 KB, 5 views)

BCCOMP

Try Right clicking on the error (Dat Optic Inc)>Uninstall
Reboot the PC and see if windows will reload the drivers for it.
Then see if you still have the error in the DEVICE MANAGER.
Bill

c2d

thanks for getting back to us.

we cannot restart the computer now (we are in the middle of converting some files) but when we finish, we will try your suggestion.

PS.- love your avatar ;)

BCCOMP

Let me know.
But if you have the other 2 DVD-Roms working on the other PCI/Firewire card you need to have the burning program set to BURN on these Rom drives. Are They?
I am thinking (correct me if I am wrong), you have 4 DVD-RW connected via 2 IDE/PCI Firewire Cards. They are connected to 2 DVD-ROM drives each(Meaning 2 DVD/RW drives to 1 IDE/PCI Firewire card) and these cards are Bridged.
Bill

c2d

hi,
sorry for the delay in getting back to you. the error message is not present any more. sometimes it shows up and sometimes it does not. we just received in the mail the part we ordered- a firewire to usb adaptor and we hope this will work. I will keep you posted

just to clarify- this is our setup:

we have a tower with four drives inside- each drive has a bridge and two drives are connected via firewires to the bridges- one drive to a second drive. so this means we have two firewire wires branching out to the outside of the tower that connect to the computer's pci card. on top of the tower we have an inkjet printer and there is a special arm that picks up the blank cds/dvds from a pile and puts them in the disc drives for burning and then takes them- one by one- to the printer and then to another pile- for the finished discs.

this is a whole system that we bought to duplicate lectures that we distribute (we do non-profit work). We do not have the money to invest in a new system- so we are trying to fix this one.

Hopefully these new wires will work. Otherwise- we will need to figure something else out.

Thank you for you help, I will keep you updated.

c2d

we connected each drive to an ide to usb wire and the computer recognizes the usb, but does not recognize the driver in the device manager.

there are no error messages- just the drive is unrecognizable.

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. we do not have the money right now to buy a whole new machine. and we have been trying to solve this issue for almost a month.

thank you again.

BCCOMP

Hi C2D,
I have seeked guidance on this one. I do not want to mislead you so I have called for reinforcements.
Bill

linderman

what is the means which powers these drives ...... the make and model of the power supply please ?


is this tower connected to a PC ? if so ....... have you tried connecting the firewire cable directly to the motherboards onboard firewire controller ?

please give more detail of how these drives process and store data (is the tower interfaced to a standard computer >>>>> if so please give full specs ?)

c2d

attached is a photo of a similar machine to what we have. we just have a different printer.

but as you can see- we have a tower with four drives and a printer on top. there are two firewire cables that run from the back of the tower to our computer. the tower also has a 240W power supply (make- famous computer; model- pe230x).

our computer is a standard computer (windows xp, 2gb ram, intel core two duo processor, 680W power supply, asus m/b) and we have added a pci card with three firewire slots. the m/b does not have any firewire slots- only usb.

we have a special software- that came with the unit- to burn data onto the cds/dvds and then print an image on the top of the disc.

we have used this machine so much that we have had to replace the dvd drives. this is the second time we are replacing the drives- last time we had no problems after we replaced the drives.

but now, it was working for a while and now it has stopped working.

inside the tower- the original setting had four bridges- one connected to each drive- with two firewire ports on each bridge. then we have one firewire cable connected from one bridge to a second bridge and a second firewire cable going out to the computer- so there are only two firewire cables going out to the computer- one cable for two drives.

today we received our order for four cables that convert ide to usb. we removed the bridge and connected one converter to each drive and connected the usb end to the computer.

the computer recognizes the usb, but it does not recognize the drives.

I hope this explains things better. let me know if you need any more info.

thank you all very much for you help.

Attached Images

Apollo_Series_CD_DVD_Duplicators_Publishers.jpg (76.5 KB, 3 views)

c2d

Just a quick update: we bought new cd/dvd drivers, mounted them into the tower and connected them directly with an ide cable into the motherboard.

this seems to work- we have tried to burn some cds.

we are still not sure what is going on with the unit. we really would like to have it back the way it was-

right now with the ide cables- the computer is situated at an angle and we have to keep the side door open. We would rather have everything closed off.

but for now it is working.

if anyone has any suggestions, please let us know.

thank you very much.

linderman

is it possible your firewire controller card is defective ?

linderman

only thinking out loud here


but you could put a dual external sata bracket which has 2 external port connectors ...... then convert with adapters @ your towe from IDE to sata ........ then sata cables would connect to the external sata ports ........ that would close the case and give you better performance directly off the motherboards sata controller (provided of course your motherboard has an onboard sata controller ?????)

what is the model number of your motherboard

I have a feeling your pci firewire cards are defective ......... both of them ...... or there is a driver glitch with them

this is what I would use if your motherboard has sata plugs

http://www.acmecables.com/detail/index.cfm?nPID=227

you would need these at your burner tower

http://www.xpcgear.com/cbis100.html

c2d

I do not think it is the firewire card because when we tried to connect the drives via an ide to usb cable- the usb was recognized- but the drivers were not.

we also tried to switch computers as well and cleaned out the system and re-installed widows xp on the computer. (both the current computer that we are using with this machine and the previous computer) this did not seem to help either.

but I will check the firewire card - how do we go about determining if it is defective or not?

thanks.

linderman

you could try installing the existing firewire card into a different computer and connect the tower to that ? most likely one of two things ..... either the card is bad or the pci slot on the motherboard which the card sits in is bad ?

does your motherboard have sata plug-ins ?