[Dvdrtools-users] report with the Sony DRX500ULX

[Samat Jain]

I've gotten my Sony DRX500ULX drive to burn discs in Linux. The
DRX500ULX is the external IEEE-1394/USB 2.0 version of the DRU500A,
pre-flashed with the 4x firmware. It's advertised to record both DVD+R/W
and DVD-R/W discs, along with regular CDs.

I'm using this drive with the 2.0e firmware on Redhat 8.0 with Linux
2.4.20-ck2. I've only used the drive with IEEE-1394, I haven't tried it
through USB 2.0. When connected, the drive appeared as a SCSI device and
immediately was recognized.

Regular CD burning worked fine with cdrecord 2.01 and cdrdao 1.1.5.

dvdrecord 0.13 doesn't work. At all. I get the error:

dvdrecord: Cannot get disk type.

cdrecord-ProDVD 2.0 doesn't work either. I get the error (when trying to
blank a prerecorded disc):

WARNING: Phys disk size 2294800 differs from rzone size 0! Prerecorded disk?
WARNING: Phys start: 196608 Phys end 2491407
Starting to write CD/DVD at speed 2 in real BLANK mode for single session.
Last chance to quit, starting real write    0 seconds. Operation starts.
cdrecord-ProDVD: Input/output error. blank unit: scsi sendcmd: no error
CDB:  A1 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
Sense Bytes: 70 00 02 7D 37 53 19 0A 00 00 00 00 30 00 00 00
Sense Key: 0x2 Not Ready, Segment 0
Sense Code: 0x30 Qual 0x00 (incompatible medium installed) Fru 0x0
Sense flags: Blk 2100777753 (not valid)
cmd finished after 0.005s timeout 9600s
cdrecord-ProDVD: Cannot blank disk, aborting.

dvd+rwutils 5.3 did work, growfs specifically. I just mastered my images
and passed them to growfs, I did not need to use the kernel patch. I did
not need to blank discs either, I just ran growfs on a pre-recorded
DVD+RW and it overwrote the old data.

So far, the media I've tested:

Ritek G03 2x DVD-R
Verbatim Data Life Plus 2.4x DVD+RW
Sony  2.4x DVD+RW

I burned both data and video DVD discs. All burned perfectly, though I
had some problems reading the DVD+RW In other drives.

One thing with burning, DVD+RW burns consistently at 2.4x throughout the
entire burning process. DVD-R, however, jumps between 1.5-2.0x. I don't
recall the system being under any different loads each test. This drive
supports lossless linking, so I am just going to take it for granted.

I don't think I like DVD+RW much. I can only get the discs made to work
in ONE of my standalones, and in only two computers' DVD-ROMs, not
including the DVD-ROM of the computer the disc was burned on. Once
inserted, the light blinks, and spits the disc back out.

I'm satisfied so far!