Has anyone here been able to successfully write a CD or DVD when a Pioneer A04 or A07 is sharing the IDE bus with another
device ?

In two separate systems (AthlonXP + nVidia nForce chipset with Pioneer A04, and Intel P4 2.8 with Intel chipset with Pioneer A07), my Pioneer drive seems to refuse to work with any settings other than Master on its own bus with no other slave devices.The drive does show up in the BIOS IDE scan and the Windows device
listing. However, on burn, Nero 6 Ultra Edition tells me the device is busy.

I've had no choice but to buy IDE controller cards to connect more IDE devices. I'd like to move the DVD burners among various systems, but this IDE pickiness. There is a chance Nero6 may be the firestarter, but I haven't tested this yet.

have you tried doing a test burn with something besides nero?

the best way to do what you want is via a firewire, or possibly usb 2.0, external box... i use firewire, and it works flawlessly.

There might be many reasons for that to happen.
Have you disabled the Windows Recording capability for the drives?
If not there will be problem if you have installed 3rd party UDF burning soft (as InCD or other).
Also make sure you don't have many burning softwares installed. Leave only Nero - there might be ASPI conflicts.
Check the DMI setting and also your advanced setting in the BIOS. Reset to safe default.
For exmple if 32bit something is enabled many people having same as mine barebone system had problems with having SATA and ATA drives together, etc.
And of coarse upgrade the drive's firmware.

I seem to recall that Pioneer drives seem to prefer PIO mode. Have you tried turning off DMA for that drive?

Ed, now that's a new suggestion. I'll give it a try. Thank you.

Just remember that DMA is REQUIRED for your hard drives to function fast enough for video.