Configure devices and DVD-/+R

[Clive Bruton]

I have a Pioneer DVR-112 in an external Firewire case, this drive writes to more-or-less any DVD/CD format as far as I can work out (CD-R/RW, DVD-R/+R/RAM/-RW/+RW/-DL/+DL...). I have to manually configure it because Retrospect Desktop does not seem to recognise it (although the vendor driver/description is available for the OS - ie Finder writing/reading works without an issue), and yesterday wasted some media setting it up for DVD-R, CD-RW and DVD-RW.

 

Back-ups then worked as expected.

 

However, today I added DVD+R to the configuration for this device, and now it won't recognise the DVD-R media.

 

Do I really have to do all the media in one config session, or will Retrospect not support both DVD-R and DVD+R on the same device?

 

Is there a way to hack the device*.rdi file so that I don't have to go through another set of media (and go and buy a full set of media types just so that I get them all in one go)?

 

I currently have a device01.rdi and device02.rdi file, not sure why (I thought the Panasonic UJ-815 support was built-in), I suspect that these are for the same device (because they have both been created in the last couple of days - no other device has been added).

[Clive Bruton]

Just to note, the DVR-112 isn't the same as the DVR-112D - rather oddly Pioneer thinks it a good idea to make two almost identical drives, at almost identical prices, but the former writes to DVD-RAM and the latter does not. I'm sure there's some logic to that... :-/

 

I've just noticed that the latest RDU supports the DVR-112D, perhaps we could get an update for the DVR-112 too?

[Clive Bruton]

Ok, figured it out: the 6.1.11.101 RDU seems to have support for the DVR-112 (and DVR-112D) - or at least it now works without a custom configuration, I don't have any DVD-RAM media to check it out with (to ensure that there is differentiation between the two models). The support database doesn't list either of these drives.

 

I had a go at trying to decode the device*.rdi file. If you open the file up with Property List Editor you'll see that the *.rdi file is just a XML file. If you open up all the levels to the file you'll find a "media" pair, which has an integer entry. My guess is that this is an integer representation of "bits" turning on or off support for various different types of media. I don't know how many bits there are (my guess is 16) but there are at least 9. Some of these could be non-functional (reserved).

 

If you look at the integer in the media pair it will either represent one or multiple bits - probably the only way to work out which is to write custom configs just supporting one media at a time. In three known configs I have an integer of 262, 8 and 4. The first has capabilities to write CD-RW, DVD-RW and DVD-R, the second DVD+R and the last DVD-RW. Which I think indicates the following:

 

************

Code:

---

bit	int			dev 1		dev 2		dev3

1 1 0 0 0

2 2 1 0 0 CD-RW?

3 4 1 0 1 DVD-RW

4 8 0 1 0 DVD+R

5 16 0 0 0

6 32 0 0 0

7 64 0 0 0

8 128 0 0 0

9 256 1 0 0 DVD-R?

10 512 0 0 0

11 1024 0 0 0

12 2048 0 0 0

13 4096 0 0 0

14 8192 0 0 0

15 16384 0 0 0

16 32768 0 0 0

 

262 8 4

---

 

************

 

I haven't got to the stage where I have manipulated the bits in the .rdi to confirm that the media selection is then changed, but these are my guesses at the moment.