Revision as of 05:41, 20 December 2007

LinuxMCE supports the Sony VGP-XL1BN (N=1,2,3...) 200-disc CD/DVD changer jukebox. The jukebox requires Firewire to connect to a host PC.

Identifying the CD/DVD Drive

Different jukebox models (and perhaps different revisions of a given model) have different CD/DVD drive models installed. All jukebox models display only "VGP-XL1B" (not their revision number) on their cases. The internal drive model can be detected at a Linux commandline with (grep -C3 -i dvd /var/log/messages) to find the device info reported when the jukebox is found by the kernel on the Firewire bus as the connected PC boots. Note that the PC might have other DVD drives, like an internal IDE or SATA DVD drive in the main chassis. The jukebox drive shows up with a "SCSI" (or scsi) label in the messages, typically immediately after the ieee1394: sbp2 driver loads (which the -C3 argument for grep should also show as context).

CD/DVD Drive Models

My XL1B contains a Matshita SW-9584 drive (with B104 firmware) (OEM'ed to Sony, but also sold by Panasonic): Matthew 17:52, 18 December 2007 (MST)
Panasonic SW-9584-C
DVD±RW (+R DL) / DVD-RAM drive
Internal - IDE
Read speed: 40x (CD) / 16x (DVD)
Write speed: 40x (CD) / 16x (DVD±R) / 4x (DVD+R DL)
Rewrite speed: 24x (CD) / 6x (DVD-RW) / 8x (DVD+RW) / 5x (DVD-RAM)

Warning

Some users have reported problems with the alignment between the changer mechanism and the drive. This misalignment can cause the changer to stop loading discs into itself before it's full, or jam and stop working, or even damage discs. There is also some advice available for fixing the alignment.