Audio CDs reported as blank & wont play

[Giles]

This seems like such a basic thing, but I cant work it out...

I've just bought a new computer, which has 1 optical drive (an Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200A). I can write read DVD videos, data CDs etc with it, but when I put an audio CD in it's reported as blank.

When I open a CD player app (KSCD), I get the error

CD-ROM read or access error (or no audio disc in drive).
Please make sure you have access permissions to:
/dev/hda

I've checked, and /dev/hda is the right device (my hard drive is sda). I've run chmod 777 on it, so I've got full permissions. I've also checked fstab, and the "users" option is included in the entry for the cd drive.

I should also mention that I've tried this with several CDs, all of which work in my Hi-Fi, so it's not a disc problem.

Any ideas?
Thanks very much
Giles

[jnike]

Hi Giles,

I know this may sound basic have you given yourself access right via groups, are you are a member of, ie disk management, cdrom - DVD group access.

Have you tried a different desktop, ie gnome to kde or kde to gnome.

How many different audio players have you tried to install and use, ie real player, XMMS, Mplayer & Amarok, just for a few.

Just another question can you down load wav or MP3 from the net and play them back?
This would confirm your sound drivers are operational.

I hope this is of help.

Jnike

[Giles]

Fair questions - I should have mentioned them in my OP.

* I am a member of all the groups that I thought could help. Since I might well be wrong in my assumptions, I'm attaching a text file with a full list of which groups I am and am not in. However, I have tried making myself a member of all groups except root and sys, and even then it didn't work.

* I've tried from within KDE and Fluxbox, and from runlevel 2

* I've tried KsCD, Amarok, and cdcd from the command line.

* I can play mp3s etc, and I do get audio when I play a DVD video in the same drive. As far as I can see it's only audio CDs which don't work.

Thanks for the reply.
Giles

[minthaka]

Why, I suspect that your mounting points are not set correctly. For example on my system the optical drives are mounted to /media. The error message speaks about /dev/hda. Is this your optical drive? It looks rather as the HDD0. Please post your /etc/fstab as well as the output of fdisk -l.

[Giles]

Hi minthaka

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd884d884

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        1019     8185086   83  Linux
/dev/sda2            1020       19457   148103235    5  Extended
/dev/sda3   *           1           1           0    0  Empty
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda4   *           1           1           0    0  Empty
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5            1020        1528     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            1529       19457   144014661   83  Linux

NB, this is the output I got when there is an audio CD in the drive, but it's not mounted - since I can't mount a disc that the system thinks is blank. The error on using the mount command is
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified


And the contents of my fstab file is as follows. It looks a little bit less neat than they often do, because it's auto-generated by Mandriva - but I didn't want to try tidying it up, in case I moved or deleted something important.

# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=206cd130-7f18-11dd-9df1-a9943b06a57a / ext3 relatime 1 1
# Entry for /dev/sda6 :
UUID=2312667a-7f18-11dd-81c8-5f747a387cd0 /home ext3 relatime 1 2
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,ro,exec 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=141cf846-adf9-43b6-a045-817e2fc2a00f swap swap defaults 0 0

Thanks for your help so far, guys
Giles

[minthaka]

I have this in my fstab:
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,unhide,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
I don't know does it makes a difference.

[minthaka]

Anyway, I have a CD-ROM and a DVD-ROM inside my PC. The question is:
If you insert an Audio-CD, does a dialog pop up asking what to do?
If yes, try to select "Play Audio-CD with Amarok", otherwise you could add this action in KDE Control Panel in Peripherals/Storage Media
Select "Audio-CD" and then set the mentioned action as default.

[fingal]

Not sure, but it's possible you have buggy firmware included with your CD player. Only a suggestion of course Giles.

[Giles]

I have this in my fstab:
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,unhide,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
I don't know does it makes a difference.

Thanks for the idea, but I'm afraid it didn't have any effect.

If you insert an Audio-CD, does a dialog pop up asking what to do?
If yes, try to select "Play Audio-CD with Amarok", otherwise you could add this action in KDE Control Panel in Peripherals/Storage Media
Select "Audio-CD" and then set the mentioned action as default.

I'm afraid trying that wont have any effect - when I put an audio CD in, a dialog does pop up - but it's the dialog for a blank CD (asking if I want to open K3B to burn to it, for example), rather than the dialog for an audio CD. There's an icon on the KDE task bar as well, which appears when I put in an audio CD - and when I hover my mouse over it, up pops the tooltip "blank CD".

Not sure, but it's possible you have buggy firmware included with your CD player. Only a suggestion of course Giles.

Thanks fingal - I'm looking at a site that seems to be fairly helpful on the subject. I've downloaded what they refer to as the original firmware, v1.0.6 from cdfreaks.com, and I'm looking at their tutorial for installing new firmware. However, there are big warnings about how I could potentially fry my drive if I do this wrong, so I'm a bit nervous about continuing... Can you say whether the instructions on that site look sensible, at least?

Sorry I'm such a coward
Thanks for all your help so far, guys
Giles

[Giles]

I have a few old CD drives on a shelf, and I tried putting 3 different ones into the rig today to see whether audio CDs would be recognised in a different drive.

In each case the CDs were correctly recognised! Hurray! That strongly suggests that the system can handle audio CDs, and it's something drive-specific that's the problem.

Except... in each case, although I could start playing a track, I could never get all the way through one before the computer (or at least whichever CD playing app I tried) froze. It's entirely possible that this is just because the CD drives I've been using are probably at least 10 years old, and have been sitting on a shelf getting dusty for a few years...

If I get the chance tomorrow, I'll try putting in a CD drive that I /know/ works, and see what happens then.

Giles