USB CD drive won't play audio CDs

[Markus Hoenicka]

Markus Hoenicka writes:
 > Hi,
 > 
 > I'm making progress towards getting most out of my TravelMate
 > 8371. Lots of things work, but I ran into a problem with my external
 > CD drive, a Sony DRX-S77U DVD/CD rewritable drive. I can boot off this
 > drive, and I can mount data CDs without a problem. However, I don't
 > seem to be able to play audio CDs on this drive.
 > 

I've collected a little more data on that problem. First, I've plugged
in the external CD drive into another laptop running FreeBSD:

FreeBSD yeti.mininet 8.0-STABLE FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE #2: Fri Mar 12
22:29:46 CET 2010     root at yeti.mininet:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
i386

This laptop has a builtin CD/DVD burner which plays audio CDs without
a hitch. However, the external one fails with similar error
messages. The problems seem to be related to the fact that the
external drive is connected via USB, whereas the internal one is an
ATAPI drive. Also, the problem is not specific to amd64 but occurs on
i386 as well.

Next, I've plugged this drive into yet another laptop running Debian
Linux. The drive was recognized in an instant, and I was able to play
audio CDs. This means that the external CD drive is not defective.

I know that FreeBSD isn't the multimedia OS of choice, but is there a
general problem reading audio CDs from USB drives? Is there a chance
that this problem is drive-specific? If yes, can anyone recommend a
drive that works?

regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
http://www.mhoenicka.de
AQ score 38