Where's my Plextor SCSI drive?

**HomeBrewer** · 14 May 2001, 22:35

I asked that very question two weeks ago with a member of Plextor sales. He told me a decision on a SCSI version 40/16/10 would be made in a couple of weeks (now!). I keep checking every day in hopes.

**xortam** · 14 May 2001, 22:44

Would that be a decision to begin development or to start shipments?

**FrankDC** · 14 May 2001, 23:30

The same rumors persist:

http://www.pcextremist.com/news/2001-02/378.shtml

It doesn't look good. IMO Plextor would have had the SCSI version of the 16/10/40 out by now if it was ever gonna happen.

**Wombat** · 15 May 2001, 01:22

Now now, the 12x was a good bit behind the IDE as well. But 12x is nice. I'd rather have a 12x Plextor than a Yamaha.

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Epox 8KTA3 w/ Duron 850@7.5*133 with Alpha 6035, 256MB Crucial 7E, G400MAX,SBLive!-MP3,Pioneer 10x DVD, Plextor 12/10/32A, IBM 45GB 75gxp, and a Sony 420GS. Running RH7.0 (2.4.0-final), and Win98 (when I have to).

**Paulr** · 15 May 2001, 01:26

16x Yamaha with 8MB of buffer.
These units are excellent - wouldn't swap it for a Plextor, even if one did exist!

**FrankDC** · 15 May 2001, 01:39

Yamahas are good but from most accounts they don't last very long. Many of them tend to overheat.

**Gurm** · 15 May 2001, 01:59

I'd rather have a 4x Plextor than any drive Yamaha makes.

Yamaha USED to be plagued by compatibility problems (no raw mode, poor audio extraction, little or no error correction). Now they are plagued by build quality problems (roughly 25% of units are DOA or DSAA, many overheat), and have a limited lifespan as compared to Plextor.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**Paulr** · 15 May 2001, 02:26

As a Yamaha owner, now on my second Yamaha unit for home.
I've also bought many in for work, both internal, external etc.
If there is an issue with these units going wrong then I'm obviously very interested in knowing about this.
I'm yet to see one stop working, well not strictly true, but I don't think even a Plextor can survive a trip down some 50 stairs.
If you could post some links showing that the Yamaha units are unreliable and 25% of them fail, I would be very interested to see them.
I need to make informed choices on what I buy in.
It's just this is the first of heard of any such issues.

**Gurm** · 15 May 2001, 08:03

PaulR,

Go to clone clinic, and flip back through the archives. Every time someone starts in on how nice Yamaha drives are, a dozen other people post saying "I've gone through three now," and "mine can't extract audio for shite" and so on.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**xortam** · 15 May 2001, 08:58

Well I brought this subject up because my Yamaha is broken. This is the first piece of home computer equipment that has ever broken on me. Granted, the problem probably was due to excessive dust penetration due to crappy old house windows (got new ones installed last week ) and my rather aggressive pursual of cleaning the unit. The Yamaha could perhaps even work again if it is simply an incorrectly remounted part (lens retention spring?). The Yamaha burner was the only optical drive in the room that has failed me, including a Pioneer DVD and an very old NEC MultiSpin 3x. I've also borrowed an HP 4020i for the last five months and its been a workhorse, never failing to burn correctly. I wanted to get a Plextor this time to experience first hand the product/company quality versus Yamaha and make my own mind up. I didn't want to go out and get the 12x Plextor just to have them come out with the 16x (like to have the best when practical). I'll try to wait a few more weeks and then I'll have to decide between the current best products between these two companies.

**rugger** · 15 May 2001, 10:18

Hehe,

I have a basic IDE 4/2/24 Smart and friendly crap drive. The stupid drive just won't die and give me a good reason to replace it. It can't even do DAE properly. I may try the 50 stair thing Paulr

**xortam** · 15 May 2001, 12:42

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by cking4@ford.com:
That's going to be real lame if Plextor dumps support for SCSI. REAL lame...</font>

Yeah, that worries me that Plextor is seemingly loosing interest in SCSI support. I'm not sure about buying a SCSI burner from a company that isn't committed to supporting SCSI. Yamaha also has a external FireWire version of the 16/10/40 burner(CRW2100SXZ) while Plextor doesn't seem to have any FireWire burners (or even announced plans to produce one). Looks to me like Plextor has been falling further behind Yamaha this last year in the area of high performance burners (though BURN-Proof™ is nice technology).

**Indiana** · 15 May 2001, 12:57

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by Gurm:
PaulR,

Go to clone clinic, and flip back through the archives. Every time someone starts in on how nice Yamaha drives are, a dozen other people post saying "I've gone through three now," and "mine can't extract audio for shite" and so on.

- Gurm

</font>

Yes, a friend of mine has the THIRD!!!! Yamaha 4416 now. The two models before died within the guarantee time! And a dealer I know took Yamaha out of their program cause of their reliability problems.

Yamaha had a good reputation some time ago (this is why my friend got the 4416), but now I think this isn't true anymore.
Plextor is a bit like Mercedes: expensive but worth it. I'd really, really hope they're not going to ditch SCSI...

[This message has been edited by Indiana (edited 15 May 2001).]

**Paulr** · 15 May 2001, 14:04

The way I see it is that people tend not to post messages along the lines of 'My drive is great' but are first to post when they have issues.
When I see a lot of posts saying that one particular product is really bad, the first thing I see is that it must be a very popular product.
Then of course you need to take the thing in context:
Well, my drive failed and a couple of friends had the same problem.....
So 3 out of the thousands of units sold had issues?
This is reminding me very much of the IBM 75GXP issue.
First a few people started reporting problems and before we knew somebody else posted that IBM said this was a known issue and they were recalling them and replacing them with 60GXP's.
The 60GXP was produced because there were known issues with the older style.
This if course was rubbish, the new drives were a technology update and not as a fix for known faulty drives.

If a company has a problem with a particular device, 9 times out of 10 they will admit to it and then recall them.
It can sometimes take them a while (Intel) but in the end they normally do the right thing.
Yamaha haven't made any admission, so unless they are hiding the fact of problems, then I think the many posts that have been seen is because the unit was popular, sold a lot of units and a few problems have shown - as with any device by any manufacturer.
I bought my 16x SCSI Yamaha about two weeks after they were released as a replacement for my Yamaha 4-4-8 and it's been the best purchase I've ever made - flawless.

BURNProof is a nice technology, no doubt about it, but although they claim 'No more coasters' this isn't strictly true, you do still get them.
I still think it takes a lot to beat doing a SCSI to SCSI CD Copy - SCSI to SCSI never fails.
The 8MB buffer on the Yamaha's certainly makes up for that missing technology.

Allowing your CD-RW to take the 50 steps test can't be advised :-)
I'd had the unit for some 6 hours before it slipped out of my hands on a tour of the building.
Now it doesn't say anywhere in the Yamaha manual they can't take that kind of punishment, but I decided not to risk it with warranty support.

Where's my Plextor SCSI drive?

Where's my Plextor SCSI drive?

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