CDrom caching... wierdness?

I'm curious to know what issues may occur with cdparanoia when trying to
rip from drives with large caches... 

In my case, I'm seeing an older drive (a MATSHITADVD-ROM SR-8584A with
512kB of cache rip with no errors, whilst a newer drive (an LG HL-DT-ST
DVDRAM GSA-4160B, with 2048kB of cache) produces a rip which looks like:

 (== PROGRESS == [!+++++++++++!+++++++++++!+++  | 004500 02 ] == :^D * ==)

(note that the two rips *were* performed on different systems, though
both with clean debian installs, both using kernel is 2.6.8-2-386, and
cdparanoia III release 9.8 (March 23, 2001)

Loaded kernel modules for the cdrom are simply ide_cd and cdrom on both. 


Anyway, as far as my research has led me so far, the LG drive has at
least one poor review for internal rip error correction:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=11079&PageId=2
...though this disc in question is very clean. 


So, could the LG's bad review be showing up here? Or is the cache
confusing cdparanoia in some manner?

Any clues would be appreciated, as I'd rather embark on a long program
of archiving without the doubts of a bunch of cdparanoia alerts...

.../nemo