CD-ROM woes

[Sykotik]

So, a month or so back my previous CD-ROM drive started thinking that refusing to read CDs would be the newest sliced cheese. I promptly figured (as it was old already) that it was acting up, booted it out of the case and got me a new one, that being a run-of-the-mill A-Open 56x drive, from one of the other PCs in here. Before my mitts were on it, it was a month or two old and hardly ever used (the other PC already had a CD-Writer used as primary CD device).
So I plug it in, and it works fine, except for every now and then struggling to find a CD, giving me input/output errors when trying to access it, and then complaining with "medium not found" to boot. Which usually went away after re-inserting the disc after a while.
Well, now I can't read any CD. At the time, the device was on my second IDE bus, so I figured putting it on the primary could be worth a shot, to see whether the fault was with the IDE2. Still no luck.
Normally I'd write this off as a faulty CD-ROM drive, but I mean heck, Jim, this thing is as good as brand spanking new!
Any suggestions or will I just have to scrunge up money for a new CD-ROM?
By the way, I am using supermount to access it, but then again, unmounting the SM and mounting as per usual doesn't help me much either.
I guess it is a hardware error, but I'm kind of hoping against hope that someone here knows some magick trick

[Dolda2000]

Check if you're using DMA to access it. Is it /dev/hdc right now? In that case, check "hdparm -d /dev/hdc". Also check "hdparm -I /dev/hdc" (that's uppercase i, not lowercase L). What IDE chipset are you using? Some chipset drivers give extra information in a file in /proc/ide (for example, I have /proc/ide/via for my VIA IDE chipset). Check if it says something. Also, try to just dumb read a CD ("cat /dev/hdc >/dev/null"), and check what kernel errors you get during that time ("dmesg | tail").
Just to gather some information.

[Sykotik]

The device is /dev/hdb at the moment, still on my IDE1. Anyway, here's the output from all the commands:

hdparm -d /dev/hdb

/dev/hdb:
 using_dma    =  1 (on)

hdparm -I /dev/hdb

/dev/hdb:
ATAPI CD-ROM, with removable media
        Model Number:       CD-956E/AKV
        Serial Number:
        Firmware Revision:  A93
Standards:
        Likely used CD-ROM ATAPI-1
Configuration:
        DRQ response: 50us.
        Packet size: 12 bytes
Capabilities:
        LBA, IORDY(cannot be disabled)
        DMA: *sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 mdma0 mdma1 *mdma2 (?)
             Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
        PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
             Cycle time: no flow control=240ns  IORDY flow control=120ns

/proc/ide/via

----------VIA BusMastering IDE Configuration----------------
Driver Version:                     3.36
South Bridge:                       VIA vt82c596b
Revision:                           ISA 0x23 IDE 0x10
Highest DMA rate:                   UDMA66
BM-DMA base:                        0xe000
PCI clock:                          33.3MHz
Master Read  Cycle IRDY:            1ws
Master Write Cycle IRDY:            1ws
BM IDE Status Register Read Retry:  yes
Max DRDY Pulse Width:               No limit
-----------------------Primary IDE-------Secondary IDE------
Read DMA FIFO flush:          yes                 yes
End Sector FIFO flush:         no                  no
Prefetch Buffer:               no                  no
Post Write Buffer:             no                  no
Enabled:                      yes                 yes
Simplex only:                  no                  no
Cable Type:                   80w                 40w
-------------------drive0----drive1----drive2----drive3-----
Transfer Mode:       UDMA       DMA       PIO       PIO
Address Setup:       30ns      30ns     120ns     120ns
Cmd Active:          90ns      90ns     480ns     480ns
Cmd Recovery:        30ns      30ns     480ns     480ns
Data Active:         90ns      90ns     330ns     330ns
Data Recovery:       30ns      30ns     270ns     270ns
Cycle Time:          30ns     120ns     600ns     600ns
Transfer Rate:   66.6MB/s  16.6MB/s   3.3MB/s   3.3MB/s

As for the dumb reading, I got two results: (first line is cat output, the rest is from dmesg)

cat: /dev/hdb: No medium found
cdrom: open failed.

cat: /dev/hdb: Input/output error
hdb: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb: command error: error=0x54
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40 (hdb), sector 1347472

[Dolda2000]

Try turning off DMA and see if it works better.

hdparm -d0 /dev/hdb

You can also try some different transfer modes after that.

hdparm -X1 /dev/hdb

Or

hdparm -X8 /dev/hdb

You can also try to decrease the disk rotation speed:

hdparm -E2 /dev/hdb

These are just some tricks. They may or may not work.

[Sykotik]

Meh. No luck there. Thankee anyway.