[Gamoe]

Greetings. I’ve been having a problem with my CD Writer, and I was hoping that someone here would have a clue as to what exactly might be causing this problem. See, I have a Power Mac 8600 with a Macally Firewire/USB combo card upgrade, among others. I have a USB Hub, a Maxtor ~ 80 GB Firewire HD and a ClubMac TEAC CD- W524E (MMC3) Firewire CD Writer (w/ “built in buffer underrun protection”) connected to the card.

Now, I use Toast to write to CDs, I put Disk Cache to maximum (64 MB), and buy brand name CDs rated at or beyond 24x, my writer’s maximum speed, yet I get a frustratingly high amount of buffer underrun errors, making my CDs useless. I’ve many dollars in ruined CDs. Even when I’ve put the speed down to 4x! What is going on here??

My suspicion is that it may have to do with the Maxtor Hard Drive (where most of the files are copied from) and the CD Writer being connected to the same card. I think it may be a card bus/bandwidth problem. Could I solve this problem by installing another Firewire card, or is this a bigger PCI bus problem, or is this something else entirely? Anyone have a clue? Any suggestion are appreciated.

Thanks.

[tooki]

I know this is an obvious question, but do you actually have a version of Toast that supports buffer underrun protection? (If a checkbox to turn protection on or off doesn't appear when you press "burn", then you don't.) It is theoretically impossible for you to get a buffer underrun if you are using the protection.

tooki

[Gamoe]

Hey.

Thanks for your input.

To answer your question:

Yes, I have version 5.0.2 of Toast for Mac OS 9(.1), and it does support the buffer underrun protection feature, and it does give me that option as a checkbox when I go to burn a CD. This is why I think that this is a part of a larger problem. I've also been getting recent crashes and apps "Unexpectedly Quitting". I know it's an older Mac now, and I've added a few things, but these things shouldn't be happening. I tend to think that it's all a result of the Maxtor HD not responding properly sometimes due to the PCI card.

Thanks.

[rjenkinson]

is your burner supported by that (older) version of toast?

-r.

[Gamoe]

Yes, it is supported.

[suprz's ghost]

just my 0.2cents but i have a B&W G3 and i have toast and an old iomega zip650 with a max write speed of 4x and i get those errors too, a wise man on this board once said that just because you can burn a cd at 16x's or 24x's etc...that is the manufacturer of the equipment saying it is "capable" of that. just like car commercials that say 48mpg "but your inidvidual mileage may vary" i woudl have to say trial and error on this , put the burner directly in the usb card and not the hub, reinstall toast, and just try to live with having to burn cd's at a slower speed. besides, cd's usually have a better quality of sound with slower burning

[Gamoe]

Thanks for the advise. No, I'm fine not burning at max speed, it's just that I was getting errors at ALL speeds. I have the burner connected to the card and the HD daisy chained to the burner (or visa versa- I've changed it a few times). Perhaps I should connect them separately to the card, but then I'd have to figure something out for the hub (connect it to either drive, I suppose).

In any case, the errors seemed to have mysteriously ceased just like they started. Now, all but two speeds are grayed out, but it gives me no errors. I might just re-install toast, wipe the internal HD and re-install the complete system again, because I've been getting a lot of random errors anyway.

What I really need is a new Power Mac with 20" Cinema Display and dual built-in drives...