Sony copy protection - broken DVD-ROM

NOTE: Followup-To set to plusnet.tech.hardware

Hi all, and hi Fran waves. It's been a long time since I had a look in
here at f.h.m. I see most of the old faces are still present and correct.
The last job was a real bitch and so time consuming. The next one is
going to keep me busy too methinks. Still, I've got a couple of weeks R&R
so I've been playing...

OS: Windows 98SE.

Hardwa LG DVD-ROM Drive
Model: DRD-8160B
ROM VER: 1.01

CD: Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come

I hasten to add that dear ol' Celine is not a favourite of mine... this
is an academic exercise mainly for my daughter's benefit, and of course
for the greater good of USENET users )

The aforementioned CD has a small black on white warning label printed on
the front and rear covers, and another small see-through silver on blue
label on the CD itself, stating that it "will not play on PC/MAC". It
does _not_ state that it "will f**k your PC/MAC".

Being of the inquisitive type as those of you who know me will remember,
and refusing to allow some unrecognisable conglomerate dictate what I can
do with my own CD, I decided to investigate this protection system a
little on my own.

Having inserted the CD with autoplay on, the drive attempted to spin up,
with the read LED coming on for a couple of seconds at intervals as
though attempting the read the disk - but in the end as expected, it
couldn't play the CD.

I then attempted to open the CD contents in Windows Explorer and got a
pop-up stating that the drive wasn't ready. At the time I assumed that
the protection was somehow making the CD invisible since the drive
"Properties" dialogue appeared to be functioning OK.

Eventually the penny dropped and I tried a known working CD - it
didn't work. Upon reboot, I found that the DVD-ROM drive is missing from
"My Computer", and finally noticed that it is no longer listed in the
POST detection!

Upon further investigation I discovered that the DVD-ROM is not
recognised by the BIOS any more when the IDE device selection jumper is
in the Master position, but it *is* recognised when in the Slave
position!

30 seconds on Google revealed an incredibly simple method of disabling
the Sony copy protection system, so the CD is now converted to MP3 for my
Zen player, and is copied to CD-R so that it will play on our PCs, so
there's no problem there.

My question relates to the DVD-ROM problem mentioned above. Does anyone
have a clue what's happened to the drive, and is it a reversable error?
Can I return the drive to Master ever again?

--
Regards,
John Patmore -

The drive is a piece of junk. Since most everything will eventually go to
dvd+r and dvd-r will be obsolete this drive can not read a dvd+r disc.
"PlusNet2" wrote in message
...
NOTE: Followup-To set to plusnet.tech.hardware

Hi all, and hi Fran waves. It's been a long time since I had a look in
here at f.h.m. I see most of the old faces are still present and correct.
The last job was a real bitch and so time consuming. The next one is
going to keep me busy too methinks. Still, I've got a couple of weeks R&R
so I've been playing...

OS: Windows 98SE.

Hardwa LG DVD-ROM Drive
Model: DRD-8160B
ROM VER: 1.01

CD: Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come

I hasten to add that dear ol' Celine is not a favourite of mine... this
is an academic exercise mainly for my daughter's benefit, and of course
for the greater good of USENET users )

The aforementioned CD has a small black on white warning label printed on
the front and rear covers, and another small see-through silver on blue
label on the CD itself, stating that it "will not play on PC/MAC". It
does _not_ state that it "will f**k your PC/MAC".

Being of the inquisitive type as those of you who know me will remember,
and refusing to allow some unrecognisable conglomerate dictate what I can
do with my own CD, I decided to investigate this protection system a
little on my own.

Having inserted the CD with autoplay on, the drive attempted to spin up,
with the read LED coming on for a couple of seconds at intervals as
though attempting the read the disk - but in the end as expected, it
couldn't play the CD.

I then attempted to open the CD contents in Windows Explorer and got a
pop-up stating that the drive wasn't ready. At the time I assumed that
the protection was somehow making the CD invisible since the drive
"Properties" dialogue appeared to be functioning OK.

Eventually the penny dropped and I tried a known working CD - it
didn't work. Upon reboot, I found that the DVD-ROM drive is missing from
"My Computer", and finally noticed that it is no longer listed in the
POST detection!

Upon further investigation I discovered that the DVD-ROM is not
recognised by the BIOS any more when the IDE device selection jumper is
in the Master position, but it *is* recognised when in the Slave
position!

30 seconds on Google revealed an incredibly simple method of disabling
the Sony copy protection system, so the CD is now converted to MP3 for my
Zen player, and is copied to CD-R so that it will play on our PCs, so
there's no problem there.

My question relates to the DVD-ROM problem mentioned above. Does anyone
have a clue what's happened to the drive, and is it a reversable error?
Can I return the drive to Master ever again?

--
Regards,
John Patmore -

In article , you say...
The drive is a piece of junk. Since most everything will eventually go to
dvd+r and dvd-r will be obsolete this drive can not read a dvd+r disc.

Fair comment I guess, but then it is a couple of years old now.
Everything is junk after 6 months in this game.

I was simply intrigued by the fact that the drive was not recognised in
Master mode, but was in Slave mode - that symptom may or may not be drive
independent, I wouldn't know.

--
Regards,
John Patmore -

To complete the story... the drive has been disconnected all day while
I've been doing other things.

Tonight, I again plugged the drive in as Slave, and it was recognised OK.

I swapped the jumper back over to Master, and it was immediately
recognised! Everything is back to normal again.

I can only imagine that some setting on the IDE interface got altered by
the Sony copy protection (corrupted data track) and was retained by a
reservoir capacitor while I was fiddling last night.

Cheers ROS, and thanks for the response.

--
Regards,
John Patmore -