www.makemkv.com

MakeMKV reports no usable optical drives with the Pioneer DVR-XD09. Reproduced on two separate DVR-XD09 units, on two different PCs, under both Windows 11 and Debian 13.6. Another Pioneer Blu-ray drive on the same Debian system works normally. I've also tried two different USB Y-cables so I'm sure the drive is getting enough power.

Drive: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-XD09, firmware 1.05 (latest available)
MakeMKV: v1.18.4 linux(x64-release)
OS: Debian 13.6 (also fails on Windows 11)

The drive is healthy at the OS level in Debian. Kernel enumerates it normally as /dev/sr1 (/dev/sg2). Raw block reads succeed with a disc inserted:
sudo dd if=/dev/sr1 of=/dev/null bs=2048 count=64
64+0 records in
64+0 records out
131072 bytes (131 kB, 128 KiB) copied, 0.180869 s, 725 kB/s

GET CONFIGURATION with RT=00 succeeds. GET CONFIGURATION with RT=02 fails, which is the command MakeMKV issues during drive probing.

Since this reproduces across two units and two operating systems, it looks like drive firmware behavior rather than anything host-side. Firmware 1.05 is the last revision Pioneer released.

Has anyone else gotten older Pioneer slim DVD drives working with MakeMKV or have any suggestions?

try sdf stop
do the os's see a disc in the drive?

GET CONFIGURATION with RT=02 fails, which is the command MakeMKV issues during drive probing.

So basically, "The Feature Header and the Feature Descriptor identified by the Starting Feature Number shall be returned", yes ? Odd. I will do some additional research, but right now I find it odd that the drive would reject that. I believe your drive is very old though, so maybe there was some old MMC that didn't have that RT value. I will try to check.

Hmm, apparently this RT value was implemented a very long time ago, it was already there in MMC-2. So no idea why it's failing.

Tried to do an SDF stop for the drive, but the drive doesn't even get far enough to show an ID in the log. Any other way to get the full ID?

Yes, I can watch DVDs using the drive in VLC on Debian and Win11.

2009 date on bottom of both

Sayaka wrote: Mon Aug 10, 2026 9:49 pm Hmm, apparently this RT value was implemented a very long time ago, it was already there in MMC-2. So no idea why it's failing.

2009 date on bottom of both

Some drafts of MMC-2 go all the way back to the year 1999 and MMC-2 had already implemented GET CONFIGURATION and that particular RT value. I would be very surprised if this drive wasn't supposed to be MMC-2 compliant, not to mention that as long as the drive implements GET CONFIGURATION, it is supposed to implement RT=02.

wyedelta wrote: Mon Aug 10, 2026 12:53 am GET CONFIGURATION with RT=00 succeeds. GET CONFIGURATION with RT=02 fails, which is the command MakeMKV issues during drive probing.

Actually, if you are aware of that, do you also have access to the exact command that gets sent, perchance ? The Command Descriptor Block should be 10 bytes long, could you post that, please ?

EDIT : I *might* have a vague idea of what could possibly be going on. After doing the above, would you mind trying to rip a DVD with one of these two drives (or with both) again, with this version of makemkv-bin ? https://mega.nz/file/36gRyYoC#zPKefdvh3 ... Nneg4I4H3Q

It's compatible with 1.18.4-oss so no need to downgrade that, just temporarily downgrade bin to 1.17.6 and let me know what happens, please.