On 9 Oct, millward wrote:
The error messages all look like this: hdb: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error} error=0x54
Try dd with a known good (pressed not burned, data not audio) CD. I have a funny feeling your problem is simply you're trying to read a bad CD-R or a CD-R on a drive that is too old to support them properly.