[jasono]

I just bought a Sony crx145e/xi firewire burner and have been unable to create anything. I have 2 ultra scsi drives and am running softraid. Since I don't have Toast I'm using Sony's Discribe. Anyway, everything appears to go well until I create the disc. The system hangs and the burner spins up but doesn't burn.
I've tried duplicating my extensions with the minimum enabled in order to complete a burn.

Any ideas? This is truly frustrating...

[Cipher13]

From what I hear, Discribe is absolute ****. Even if you weren't having problems, I owuld recommend you go and get Adaptec Toast Deluxe 4 - it is awesome.

This'll be moved to Peripherals any minute now...

Cipher13

[This message has been edited by Cipher13 (edited 08-12-2000).]

[jbmelby]

From what I hear, Discribe is absolute ****. Even if you weren't having problems, I owuld recommend you go and get Adaptec Toast Deluxe 4 - it is awesome.

Well, I don't know where you've heard that Discribe is "absolute ****"--but as a user of both Toast Deluxe 4 and Discribe 2.99, I can testify that Toast is very buggy and temperamental, whereas Discribe works flawlessly for me every time. Toast may be "awesome," but not if you can't get it to work--which, judging from the profusion of postings over the past several months concerning problems with Toast, seems to be frequently the case. The only way that I can get Toast to burn in DAO mode, for instance, is to turn off all the Toast extensions and activate the Discribe extensions instead. Then, and only then, can I get Toast to burn as it's supposed to.

[Cipher13]

Well, I don't know which forums you've been surfing for the past couple of months, as it seems most software related burning problems occur whtn Discribe is involved, and are remedied when Toast becomes involved.
So, you gonna post exactly what your problem is so that it can be fixed?
FYI I also had lots of problems with Toast when using it on my 5500 with 32 RAM, OS 9 (already a bad thing) and a SCSI Yamaha 8424. When moved to the G4, all problems went away.
Make sure you have plenty of RAM free.
I imagine the SCSI card in the 5500 may also have contributed.

Cipher13

[This message has been edited by Cipher13 (edited 08-13-2000).]

[MacNZ]

I use Toast Deluxe 4.1 with my Sony drive and have had no probs. I would definately switch to it. The only problem I had was before I added another 128Mb RAM to my 7300. I would have to agree it is probably domething to do with Discribe or available memory. I usually set my Toast disk cache for writing really high so it ain't screw up while writing.

[Veerle]

Toast is the best program for the job and to my knowledge it's the only one that let's you create hybrid CD's for Mac and PC . The only error that I have come across with Toast was that you have to remove network disks before writing otherwise it will fail due to some communication between the Mac and the disk on the desktop. For the rest it is very stable.

[Misha]

Transfering to Peripherals... wlonh is gone for a week, and I was gone for a few days. Things in the forums slow down when that happens.

[jasono]

Here's what's happening. I'm able to make it all the way to the point of burning a cd. When I press the "Create CD", whether in test mode or not, the progress bar appears but nothing happens. I usually have to force quit the software and restart my computer or manually power off my cd burner, as they just hang - both the discribe software and burner.

Also, I'm unable to play a regular audio cd from this drive.

I've tried turning off extensions and have made sure vm is off. I can't think of what else to do. Anyone heard of any conflicts with the USB intellimouse or wacom tablets?

Thanks again!

[Cipher13]

Well, USB is that bad, that it may well be that.
Probably not, but its worth trying it out with no other peripherals attached (USB or FireWire), and also disable the extensions for any FW or USB devices you have...

Cipher13

[Cipher13]

I have a feeling the Wacom is causing the problems.
System stats?
http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Foru...ML/001617.html

Cipher13

[MSchienle]

As mentioned earlier, Discribe is the likely problem. I have the same Sony drive on an iMac DV SE and/or Pismo 500. Both systems exhibited the same behavior as you describe. Remove all remnants of the Sony (be sure to find the ilink extension) and Discribe software and load Toast. Just to make sure jbmelby has a reference: Discribe is absolute **** :-)

[GORDYmac]

When you say, "the progress bar appears but nothing happens," you do realize that this is a relatively slow process, right? Does your mouse freeze? If you can Force Quit the app, I don't think it's crashing. It could be doing everything from filling the RAM Cache to actually writing the CD during the pause you noted. Depending on your writer's speed, it could take anywhere from 9 (8x) to 40 (2x) minutes to write a full CD.

To test this, set up a job as usual, and just let it run. Check it in about 10 minutes and see if the progress bar has changed.

I've never used Discribe, but Toast gives pretty good progress notes, so I always know what it's doing. I'm assuming Discribe doesn't.

Also (as with any mac app), when in doubt, delete the prefs.

Good luck.

[jasono]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I was able to finally get it to burn some cds (audio and data). I also haven't burnt any coasters yet.

I was able to do this by tossing out discribe and installing toast 4.1. I haven't had any problems yet.

Also, Gordymac, I did give it all the time in the world before quitting the process - 20 minutes while I went and did laundry.