I can try...

DMA stands for Direct Memory Access.

When your burner was running with DMA turned off, the IDE bus required quite
a bit of overhead from the CPU in order to move data around...the CPU was
actually doing the work of moving data from the source to the burner.  With
DMA turned on, a separate bit of circuitry on the chipset, the DMA
controller, actually takes on a significant portion of the CPUs job, namely
providing the means to quickly move data from one point to another without
using the CPU as an intermediary.

In the past (actually, quite a while ago), DMA was exclusively in the realm
of chip memory.  It was a trick that Intel came up with to speed up the 8088
processor.  Since the 486 (or thereabouts), with proper OS support, IDE
peripherals can also use DMA.

The reason that your burner wasn't working is probably because the CPU would
become so busy doing other tasks with the OS that it couldn't devote enough
time to keeping a steady stream of data flowing to the burner.  Since
burning CDs requires an uninterrupted flow of data, this caused your burner
to prematurely close the CD.

Hope that helps!

Drew Dunn
The NOSPIN Goup

-----Original Message-----

Hi all,

I was having some trouble burning audio cds with a LG 12x burner. It
would stop after one or two tracks and close the cd. I enabled DMA on
the burner and on the hdd and now everythings works fine. Why? anyone
got a technical explanation for me?

Joe

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