SCSI problems

Question: I have a big problem. Nothing seems to work. MakeCD or the SCSI bus keeps hanging. What can I do about this?

Answer: Your CD-burner and/or your SCSI host adapter is faulty. Sorry, but we are unable to help you in this instance. Please check our compatibility list -- perhaps you will find a user there with a similar configuration who has managed to resolve the problem.

If this doesn't help, try the following -- in test mode!

• Select a small chunk size (32 or 64KB) in the settings window and see it that helps. We have been told that this helps with some Phase 5 host adapters.
• The chunk size plays a major part as to whether hanging occurs with the Philips CDD 2600 (and possibly with other CD-burners). Some people report hanging when the chunk size is too small, but in our experience hanging occurs when the chunk size is too large. You may need to experiment a little here.
• Some customers have told us that their Philips burners have never hung up, even though they are using the same interface as other people who are experiencing system hanging. However, those without problems have changed their SCSI chop "WD-04" for a SCSI chip of type "WD-08". Try changing your SCSI chip too.
• Turn off parallel read/write in the settings window and then test. If you turn off parallel read/write, the buffer will be constantly almost empty. This is normal but also more dangerous since a buffer underflow is more likely. In this case there is little point in selecting a large buffer. 1MB should be more than sufficient.
• Turn off reselection for all devices, especially for the CD-burner. We have included a small tool with most versions of MakeCDto turn off reselection for Commodore's V39/V40 scsi.device. If this helps, experiment with reselection until you establish which devices can have reselection turned on and which devices must have reselection turned off. If reselection is turned off, the same applies to the buffer behaviour as described above.
• Carsten Schlute (formerly with phase5) has tipped setting the CD-burner to a lower ID number than the hard drive which is being read. This can sometimes help with phase5 hardware and possibly other hardware.
• If nothing helps, try borrowing another host adapter and see if the results are any better. Turn off reselection for the CD-burner, but turn on parallel read/write.

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