cd writer insanity

I've burnt at least 20 coasters today, as I try to figure out why my CD writer cannot burn any isos larger than about 128 mb anymore without producing discs that the kernel complains have media errors and refuses to mount or read.

Since I need to be able to burn CDs for work, getting this fixed has an annoying urgency. Worse, I've changed a lot of stuff on my system since I last burnt a full-sized iso last week, and so I have far too many variables to juggle. Excess heat from the new drive I added just below the CD drive? New version of cdrecord? New drive on the same ide controller? New ide cable? Just hit a bad patch on my stack-o-blanks? Damaged the CD drive while removing it earlier? Computer doesn't like rainy weather? Or maybe a crazy ISO that just won't burn while others will. At this point I can eliminate half of those and am going crazy working on the others. And thinking about just buying a new CD writer.

Aargh, I hate CDs. They're so completly the modern floppy, except they manage to suck even more.