Where's my Plextor SCSI drive?

[xortam]

I hunted around several sites, including CDR-Info, trying to dig up what I could on those two drives. I searched the forums on some of the sites but I guess I missed the CDR-Info forums. Those folks are predicting a mid-July release for the 24x drive and I don't think I could have held off my buddy for that long (wants his loaner back). I haven't been able to try a burn yet (still trying to straighten out my systems from the failed SW install) but I'll need to start investigating what media to use. I've been using Fuji CD-Rs lately (rated 16x) and I see the drive came with a Taio Yuden CD-R and a Verbatim RW. I know that Japanese CDs are generally the best out there. I'll be interested to see how far I can push my old RWs (cheap Taiwanese GQs).

[XHotKolaX]

I'm with Paulr

I got the yamaha 2100 and am darned happy with it. Altho' at 1st no burnproof which I thought sucked, but then there's an 8MB buffer and it's scsi. I play UT online while burning w/ no coasters(cloneCD btw). Well..I did this with a ricoh burner too, but those froze up the system while writing lead-in/out.

I thought of getting the plextor version because I've heard so much about them. But they're alway out of stock or way overpriced. I went yamaha instead. We'll see what happens in a couple years.

BTW, scsi burning only really works if your HDD is scsi too. But I'm sure you all knew that already=)

[xortam]

The Plextor only cost me $258 USD (my old Yamy cost me $388 at the time). The shop also had the new Yamy for $258 but Yamaha has a $30 rebate going on right now.

AFA SCSI burning, my system is pure SCSI so no problems there.

[Jake]

Hi Guys!

I am the happy owner of a Plexwriter PX-820 SCSI drive. While it's not the fastest drive out there anymore, it just keeps on running like a charm. I know it hasn't got the "fanzy-smanzy" burn-proof, but I can still live with about 10 minutes to cook a 700 Mb CD, and it NEVER produces coasters.

This drive works so great, that I sold my my 40x SCSI Plextor CD-ROM. I felt it was just taking up space in my tower. And I newer did do a lot of 1-1 copies anyway.

I have thought about getting a 16x writer, but I have better ways to spend my hard-earned dough.

If you really have the need for speed, more power to you. All I can say is that I love my Plextor!

Regards,

Jake

[xortam]

Found one of the major problems with my new burner SW. I couldn't get to any of my CD drives after removing ECDC, et.al. I resolved the problem yesterday after finding a note in the MSFT knowledge base. Today I found a decent explanation of the problem on Roxio's knowledge base ...

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">This problem is caused by an association created in the system registry between these specific Adaptec driver files and the CD file system drivers for Windows 2000. If the Adaptec driver files are renamed or removed, then the system will loose access to any CD drive (CD ROM, CD recorder, or DVD).</font>

Adaptec/Roxio sure can't seem to get there act together with their burner SW, especially on W2K. It seems things just keep getting worse with every release. I'm still having problems running the ECDC system tests on my burner (in both Win98 and W2K). I'm not sure if it's the HW but the tests work o.k. on my buddies HP burner. The burner also takes quite a while to POST, even after updating the firmware from 1.01 to 1.02. Time to download Nero and test it out.

[xortam]

Took my new burner box over to my buddies house and tried it on his system. The drive wouldn't even POST ... system froze. I opened up the box and Eureka! Damn my old eyes! I had removed the wrong jumper ... parity vs. termination. The burner then came up fine and passed system tests on his ECDC SW. I took the box back home and reconnected my ancient NEC Multispin 3X CD in the burner box and fired up my system ... I still had SCSI resets intermittently freezing my Win98 system. I disconnected the NEC CD again and fired her up and everything was hokey dokey. Burned some data files and was quite impressed by the total burn time delivered by the 12x bandwidth. I'll have to so some more types of burning but so far I'm pretty happy with the drive though I would like to keep my old CD drive still hooked up for those multi-disk games.

[DentyCracker]

I won't buy a SCSI burner mainly because of two things. The first is cost, not only do I have to buy a more expensive CDR, I also have to buy a SCSI card. This was acceptable to me in earlier pre-burnproof times, as the performance benefit to cost ratio was acceptable to me in theory (however I had practically no disposable income at the time). With the advent of burnproof, the benefit is not worth the extra cost (IMHO). it is for this reason that my next Plextor Burner will be IDE. Steve, as for your argument about speed, I've used the 1210A and on the systems I've used it on the speed works out faster than 8x even when listening to mp3s, and sufring the 'net while burning. My 8x non burnproof sometimes underruns when I try that. There is an acceptable benefit to me from using a burnprof burner and it obviates the need in my case for SCSI. Now I would try my darndest to ensure all my servers were SCSI, or my graphics workstations or anything else where multiple access of the disk subsystem is a necessity. If there weren't such a (again IMHO) high price premium for SCSI, then I would wholeheartedly embrace it for everything. There is no doubt it is the higher performance option and I've recommended that my company acquire one for their server (Plextor of course)

[xortam]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by DentyCracker:
... There is no doubt it is the higher performance option ...</font>

It is when the company supports SCSI on their best drives.