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In the Forums... |
Posted: September 6, 2000 Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen Installation and Setup For some reason we had some difficulty with the PlexWriter 12x4x32. The drive wouldn’t coexist with our Jaz and Zip SCSI drives but after a few minutes playing around with some alternative SCSI ID settings we managed to get the drive to work. For some reason even setting the drive to use the same ID as the 12x2x20 SCSI that was already on the channel didn’t work. Yes, we did take out the older drive. After we got the drive to work, burning CD’s was a soar affair. None of our CD mastering software worked with the drive. From Nero to DiscJuggler, all I got was coasters. After making 5 coasters, I was beginning to get fed up with the drive. Then I decided to use Adaptec EasyCD Creator 3.5 that came with the drive and surprisingly everything worked flawlessly. It seems that most of the CD mastering software that I was using weren’t compatible with the 12X writing speed and the only choice I had was Adaptec. Let’s take a look at how the drive performs. Benchmarks AMD "Thunderbird" Athlon 1GHz Asus A7V rev. 1.01 256MB Infineon PC133 SDRAM Cas2 Asus V7700 GeForce2 GTS with official Detonator 3 (6.18 Adaptec 2940U2W SCSI Adapter IBM Ultrastar 72ZX 73.2GB Windows 98 SE Adaptec EasyCD Creator 3.5c The Numbers  The 12x4x32 shaved off almost 2.5 minutes from its older brother, the 8x2x20. The difference between the 12X SCSI and ATAPI is practically nothing. But the SCSI has a 4MB data buffer whereas the ATAPI version only has 2MB. I just feel more secure with the SCSI drive simply because it handles multitasking better and the channels don’t get saturated as easily. While we were writing, we decided to load up a game of Quake 3 Arena, and surprisingly everything went well. I was scared that I’d make my 6th coaster but that just wasn’t the case. Try this with an IDE system and you’ll be spinning shiny scrap in no time. |
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