Mandrake 9.2 Warning

[rapier57]

Whew!!! Looks like I may have dodged a bullet. Was on the fence about trying either Mandrake or RH. Took the RH 9.x plunge. Now, I'm glad I did. Built an nmap/ethereal machine.

Anyway, this is reminicent of the problems with the S3 video cards a few years ago.. I had no end of problems with installing several of the Linux distros on systems that used any of the S3 video implementations or chipsets. One install attempt blew out the monitor.

Yeah, operating systems can get to areas in hardware that can cause damage.

[MrLinus]

Well.. Here it is. The final decision on what the cause was from Mandrake's Errata Site

The problem was that the kernel would send a FLUSH_CACHE command to the LG CD-ROM drive which would make the drive inoperable by overwriting its firmware. This is because LG CD-ROM drives are not compliant with the ATAPI specification. The specification does not require an implementation of the FLUSH_CACHE command in the driver, and returning an error (or doing nothing) would have been the correct behaviour for the drive. Likewise, reusing a command is against the specification and LG has reused the FLUSH_CACHE command to modify the firmware of the drive, but they are unwilling to disclose exactly what the command does. This FLUSH_CACHE command is supposed to be supported only by CD-RW or DVD-RW devices; the LG-based CD-ROM devices are understanding this command as the UPLOAD_FIRMWARE command.

A new kernel (2.4.22-21mdk) has been released that fixes this problem in the kernel, although the CD-ROM devices are still not up to specification. New CDs and ISOs will be available shortly to correct these problems; they will come with the new kernel.

Visit the errata page for links to patches, etc.

It strikes me as I read this that a) LG sees itself as having no fault in this b) LG creates CDRom drives (and other drives) that do not meet industry standards.