HP Forums

Full Version: Reading the New HP Museum DVD disks
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.

I got version 6 of the HP Museum late last week and when I put DVD disk one in my iMac G5, the Superdisk spit it back out which indicated it could not read it at all. Then I put the disk in my Dell Inspiron 8500 DVD burner and Windows XP showed the disk in the drive and upon opening it, I got a file list. But, when I tried to open start.htm under IE7, it hung up in a loop of trying to open the startup file. Hummm, now that's strange.

So, I took it to work and put it in my XP machine and IE 7 opened up the disk and I could browse it with no problems. I also checked DVD disk 2 in all three machines and I could browse without a problem. Has anyone else had a problem with their HP Museum disks?

BTW, I should mention that I love all the new material on the disks. It's great. When the DVDs arrived in the mail, my wife looked at me and said, "What did you order now"? I showed it to her and explained to her what was on them and all she did was roll her eyes. More geek stuff. She let's me have this and I let her have her catalogs. It works out well.

Thanks for the feedback,

Gerry

Quote:
I showed it to her and explained to her what was on them and all she did was roll her eyes. More geek stuff. She let's me have this and I let her have her catalogs. It works out well.

Thanks for the feedback,

Gerry


Sounds like a neat arrangement. Just don't give her a 35s for your next wedding anniversary. It sounds like a marginal disk. I'm sure Dave will send you a replacement if you explain the problem.

I also have a problem with the HP Museum version 6 DVD disk 1 on my MacBook (May 2007 version) with the 8x double-layer Super Drive. I was attempting to copy DVD disk 1 to my hard drive and about halfway through the process it went into a loop where it sounded like the drive was spinning loudly, almost like my fan kept stopping and starting. It kept doing that until several minutes after I had pressed the "X" to cancel the copy. DVD disk 2 copied to my hard drive without any problems.

I contacted Dave Hicks and he quickly responded that he had contacted the DVD duplicating company and they were investigating the problem. I'm sure that Dave will do his best to see that this issue is resolved.

I wish to thank Dave for his devotion and wonderful work on hpmuseum.org and in putting these disks together. It's an invaluable service to those of us who have a strong interest (or strange obsession as my wife might put it) in HP calculators.


Thank you,

Greg

Good evening Gerry. All I can say is remind wife that staying home and looking at HP DVD better that going to bar and getting in trouble.

I not have any of the DVD so I can not help with that. I sorry.

To All:

Thanks for your responses. Steve, I would never give my wife a 35s for our anniversary. I was thinking a vacuum cleaner ;-). No, I actually bought a vacuum cleaner for an old girl friend when I was very young. I learned quickly that for birthdays and anniversaries, I'm to get something romantic and frivolous (is that the engineer in me?) to commemorate the occasion; ESPECIALLY if she says it's alright, she doesn't need anything. Lastly, I'm saving the good stuff, like a 35s for ME! When it's my birthday and she comes pleading with me about a week before asking me what I want, that's when I get the good loot!

Greg, I second my gratitude to Dave for the herculean effort it takes to publish these DVD disks. I enjoy them very much and simply offer my thanks.

Gerry

I didn't have any problem reading the discs on my PowerMac G4 with a Pioneer DVR-110D. The first disc appears to be dual-layer, which can cause difficulties for some DVD drives.

I really like the new color scans of the manuals. There's a lot of great stuff on the discs.

I got CRC errors with the HP Museum v6 DVD1 on a Plextor PX-130A. I managed it to make a copy to hard disc with a Plextor PX-716A DVD burner.

DVD2 is working without problems.

Cheers

Christoph

Dear All,

No problems with both DVD's sent to Germany on July 26th. Able to read them completely on (older) TOSHIBA SD-C2502.

I want to thank Dave and all the volunteers, who spend their leisure time to scan the manuals for a collection of information which proves to be several times worth the price paid for the DVD's!

My special thanks go to Bill (Smithsville) who finally motivated me to order from Dave.

Best regards

Peter A. Gebhardt

Edited: 3 Aug 2007, 4:36 a.m.

Both of my DVD's unfortunately arrived completely scratched. While I managed to copy the first one to harddisk, the second one is definitely a no-go (I tried on three different DVD-burners).
The problem in my case lies in the packaging, it does not keep the DVD's firmly in place - so during shipping they turn loose and move all over the place, becoming badly scratched.
As normal cleaning did not help I will try a special CD cleaning paste which should get rid of light scratches, before I will bother Dave with a replacement request.
I would like also to seize the opportunity to thank Dave for his incredible effort to put all this material together!

Chris.

Quote:
The problem in my case lies in the packaging, it does not keep the DVD's firmly in place - so during shipping they turn loose and move all over the place, becoming badly scratched.

Yes, you're right. The DVD holder on the left side of the packaging is also broken on my shipping (haven't found the broken part inside), but I have the luck that disc2 has only scratches on the painting, whereas disc1 has scratches only on a spot near the middle on the laser reading side.

So the broken holder seem not to be an exception like I thought first.

Cheers

Christoph

Quote:
but I have the luck that disc2 has only scratches on the painting, whereas disc1 has scratches only on a spot near the middle on the laser reading side.

You may not have the luck you think (although if you can read them now, you are OK this time)! But, in general, scratches on the "laser reading side" (by which I presume you mean the clear, or down, side) are generally NOT a problem unless they are fairly severe. The information on the disk is actually encoded just below the printed side, i.e. on the top side of the plastic disk material just below the printed label. Light from the reading beam enters the bottom side in a relatively wide beam that is in the process of being focussed into a spot at the top. So, a scratch on the "top" side will cause problems if it extends through the label into the information material layer.

That said, I, too, have suffered from serious scratching on the clear side of an audio CD. I managed to cure the problem by polishing the plastic with a gentle rubbing using toothpaste.

I agree in cases when scratches on the painting side go through the near-bye underlying reflection plate.

CD's or DVD's with such a defect are unreadable and unrepairable.

Cheers

Christoph

Quote:
The information on the disk is actually encoded just below the printed side, i.e. on the top side of the plastic disk material just below the printed label.

True for CDs, but not for DVDs.

Assuming single-sided DVDs, you'd have to have damage (from the "label" side) more than half way through to affect the data on a single-layer DVD, and almost half way through to affect the data on a dual-layer DVD.

For some diagrams of the physical structures of DVDs, see http://www.divxland.org/dvd_formats.php or chapter 3 page 3 of http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/dvd/e/whats/index.htm.

I believe that the HP Museum version 6 DVD set is one DVD-9 (single-sided dual-layer) plus one DVD-5 (single-sided single-layer).

The direction of a scratch makes a big difference. If the scratch is radial, then there's a good chance that between the data interleaving and error correction codes, the disc drive will be able to correct the errors. If the scratch is tangential, or worse yet, parallel to the track, then too long of a stretch of data may be corrupted to make a correction. If you try to polish out a scratch, then be sure to rub radially. For polishing, Brasso or NEVR-DULL metal polishes seems to work well, although some mildly abrasive toothpastes should work, and there are products marketed specifically for CDs and DVDs.

Regards,
James

Edited: 7 Aug 2007, 8:49 a.m.

Quote:
True for CDs, but not for DVDs

James,

Thanks for the correction - I knew this was the case for CDs, and I just assumed CDs and DVDs had the same physical layout!