I have an old netserver E800 with two P3 1gig processors and 2gb of RAM. I'm using XP professional and the BIOS is the latest available. It's not the quickest hound in the pack but is adequate for my uses and seems to cope quite well with memory hungry programs like Photoshop compared with modern low-end PCs.
I added a DVD writer a few months back which I bought from E-Bay for £20. As it is an HP writer I thought it would be a perfect choice for an HP machine.
I was thoroughly disappointed with burn speeds from the outset, using Nero it took hours to burn a DVD. Looking for a solution I decided to update the firmware. The latest HP update for this (HP16) is a DOS based flashing .exe which refused to work (probably because the drive is from a different model to the one it is now in) So I tried the Liteon route. The Liteon flasher said no thanks, as well. So I used Flashfix to update it to Liteons latest for the model HSOE.
Writing speed was still incredibly poor with the buffer bouncing up and down like Jordan on a pogo stick. I read, on this Forum about the importance of DMA being used for IDE and sure enough, my IDE channel is stuck on PIO.
I have tried everything to revert it to DMA but it resolutely refuses to do so. This is what I have tried so far:
I've used the resetdma.vbs facility from michna.com
Toggled between PIO only and DMA if available in Device Manager on the IDE channel.
Toggled every IDE option in BIOS :autotype/cdrom pio1,2,3/dma1,2
Uninstalled the IDE
Uninstalled the writer
Uninstalled the drivers for both
Tried burning with Easy, Ashampoo, HP RecordNow, Sonic RecordNow and Nero 6 and 7 (latest of both)
My next course of action will be to install the drive into my patio using a lump hammer unless someone can think of a solution. At £20 it's not a big deal for me to replace but will I have the same trauma with another drive. Is the issue with my trusty Netserver?
