🚀 go-pugleaf

NOTE: Followup-To set to plusnet.tech.hardware

Hi all, and hi Fran <waves>. It's been a long time since I had a look in 
here at f.h.m. I see most of the old faces are still present and correct. 
The last job was a real bitch and so time consuming. The next one is 
going to keep me busy too methinks. Still, I've got a couple of weeks R&R 
so I've been playing...

OS:       Windows 98SE.

Hardware: LG DVD-ROM Drive
          Model: DRD-8160B
          ROM VER: 1.01

CD:       Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come 

I hasten to add that dear ol' Celine is not a favourite of mine... this 
is an academic exercise mainly for my daughter's benefit, and of course 
for the greater good of USENET users :o)

The aforementioned CD has a small black on white warning label printed on 
the front and rear covers, and another small see-through silver on blue 
label on the CD itself, stating that it "will not play on PC/MAC". It 
does _not_ state that it "will f**k your PC/MAC".

Being of the inquisitive type as those of you who know me will remember, 
and refusing to allow some unrecognisable conglomerate dictate what I can 
do with my own CD, I decided to investigate this protection system a 
little on my own. 

Having inserted the CD with autoplay on, the drive attempted to spin up, 
with the read LED coming on for a couple of seconds at intervals as 
though attempting the read the disk - but in the end as expected, it 
couldn't play the CD. 

I then attempted to open the CD contents in Windows Explorer and got a 
pop-up stating that the drive wasn't ready. At the time I assumed that 
the protection was somehow making the CD invisible since the drive 
"Properties" dialogue appeared to be functioning OK.

Eventually the penny dropped and I tried a known working CD - it 
didn't work. Upon reboot, I found that the DVD-ROM drive is missing from 
"My Computer", and finally noticed that it is no longer listed in the 
POST detection!

Upon further investigation I discovered that the DVD-ROM is not 
recognised by the BIOS any more when the IDE device selection jumper is 
in the Master position, but it *is* recognised when in the Slave 
position!

30 seconds on Google revealed an incredibly simple method of disabling 
the Sony copy protection system, so the CD is now converted to MP3 for my 
Zen player, and is copied to CD-R so that it will play on our PCs, so 
there's no problem there.

My question relates to the DVD-ROM problem mentioned above. Does anyone 
have a clue what's happened to the drive, and is it a reversable error? 
Can I return the drive to Master ever again? 

-- 
Regards,
John Patmore - <mailto:fsnews0505@jpatmore.freeserve.co.uk>