Assuming that the boot process gets far enough, Has anyone tried to enable DMA? Cheatcode is "Knoppix dma", if I remember correctly. I have experienced many issues with older Plextor drives under Windows wiithout DMA turned on. If I can remember correctly, there were a couple of occasions where the drive was basically locked and spinning until a hard reboot. I was not sure at the time if it was a software issue or the DMA not being enabled for some strange reason, but updating the burning software and turning on DMA seemed to cure it. Could it be possible that these drives have some issues under Linux in that regard? Just a SWAG, but might be worth the time to explore it.

There are increasing numbers of problem reports coming out. Hopefully someone with some kernel hacking experience will notice...
Has anyone done some verification and workup and reported this as a bug?

A quick look at BOTH the Plextor AND the BENQ sites did not provide any reason to believe that they claim these drives support Linux in any fashion. Plextor did have a page claiming that ALL of their CD-R/RW drives were supported in Linux, but there is no mention of the DVD drives. The Manuals/Specifications for the drives do not show Linux to be listed as a compatible Operating System. A quick search did not reveal any information on this issue either. Has anyone contacted the Drive manufacturers for assistance? They might nave more information available on their drive's issues with Linux or should be made aware of them.