view DOCS/CDROM @ 644:88eb1a3f7bfb

Changed code, should be faster on Athlon/K6 but slower on PIII with SSE, more portable.

Tune up CDROM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Introduction
~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From Linux documentation:

Some CDROM drives are capable of changing their head-speed. There are several
reasons for changing the speed of a CDROM drive. Badly pressed CDROMs may
benefit from less-than-maximum head rate. Modern CDROM drives can obtain very
high head rates (up to 24-times is common).  It has been reported that these
drives can make reading errors at these high speeds, reducing the speed can
prevent data loss in these circumstances.  Finally, some of these drives can
make an annoyingly loud noise, which a lower speed may reduce.

Howto
~~~~~
The recommended way to do it is with a program called 'setcd' . It's kinda
old, but won't be too hard to find on the Net.
Use it with :
	setcd -x <speed> <cdrom device>

Also you can try :
	echo current_speed:4 >/proc/ide/<cdrom device>/settings
but you'll need root privileges. (It didn't work for me - Gabucino)

I use following command too :
	echo file_readahead:2000000 >/proc/ide/<cdrom device>/settings
for 2MB prefetched reading from the file (it's useful for scratched CDROMs).

It's recommended that you tuneup your CDROM drive also with hdparm:

hdparm -d1 -a8 -u1 <cdrom device>
to enable using DMA access, readahead, and IRQ unmasking.
(if you don't understand these, *read the hdparm manpage*)

Final words
~~~~~~~~~~~
Please refer to "/proc/ide/<cdrom device>/settings" for fine-tuning your CDROM.

	Nick Kurshev & Gabucino
	  <[e-mail]>