Strange hardware error on my Sony DRU-810A??

[MikeyBK]

I just thought I'd share a strange occurance with my burner on the new rig.
I set the Sony DRU-810 and the Mad Dog on Cable Select on the only IDE cable connection thats on my system, and while they both copied fine, only the Mad Dog could burn. The Sony kept getting a hardware error. I made four coasters in a row!!...that's more coasters more than all of last year!! ..

Anyways, I rechecked the IDE cables to ensure that they were seated completely...I tried setting the jumpers on the Sony and MadDog to master and slave, but the same result. I uninstalled the IDE channel...same result.
I started to suspect that the Sony was dying, so I tried to flash it to the 1.0f firmware..it would not take, due to a communication error...

Anyways, I started suspecting that the IDE cable itself was defective at the end connector, so I swapped the Sony and MadDog in the top two drive bays and set them to cable select again (originally the Sony was in the first bay connected to the end of the IDE cable and the MadDog in the second bay in trhe middle connection, both when I had it as cable select and also when I had them as master/slave...)

Well what do you know!!! They now both can now copy 'AND' burn!?!?!...strange huh?? Have you guys ever heard of such a thing?? Seems that the Round IDE cable I put in doesn't like the Sony at the end, set as master or cable select?? I couldn't just switch the connectors without changing them in the drive bays because the round cable is of perfect length and couldn't be twisted to put the middle connector to the top drive bay...

Anyways, thought I'd share that and see what you guys thought of it. Never had something like that happen before???
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[Chewy]

that's why all my drives are standalone masters

I never have any problems like that any more

I hate cable select, bad idea and outdated

[doctorhardware]

I have always used master and slave and never have had any problems.

[MikeyBK]

The thing is that it now runs perfectly on cable select. I've mostly used cable select and always had good results. It's just defaulting to the system to detect/control the master and slave on the IDE bus, no?. And actually setting the Sony and MadDog to master/slave didn't help anything..

For some reason the round IDE cable did not like the Sony attached to the end connector of the cable??

I have one SATA burner on one of the 6 SATA channels on my mobo, but since I had the two burners for the IDE, I just connected them both. I plan to eventually convert over to another SATA drive or two and then only connect a single drive as master on the IDE channel.
SATA is the bus architecture for the near future, that's why I went for this mobo with 6 SATA ports and also has two eSATA external ports as well, for connecting external SATA harddrives.

[doctorhardware]

Although I did have a round 80 conductor cable go bad in my son's computer. It never did anything weird. I ran several hardware diags but the cable never showed up as being bad. So I tried to reload the os but it would never let me complete the full install.