Message-Id: <3.0.16.19910215211653.2ac73f40@tellus.swip.net> X-Sender: mt58779 AT tellus DOT swip DOT net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 Demo (16) To: opendos AT delorie DOT com From: Bernie Subject: Re: prob audio CD on 2nd CD-ROM with NWCDEX Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 07:46:18 +0100 Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Pat wrote: >In fact faster CDROMs have more of >a tendency to skip on audio CDs that slower ones. I have seen this many, >many times. An audio CD will play fine in a 2X or 4X drive and skip like >crazy in a 12X, 16X, or higher speed drives. A faster CD will not be so forgiving for errors on the surface etc. as a slower would. I've never had any problems with my 32X Pioneer (a slot-in actually, now I can't understand how I could live without one earlier ). >Even when loading software like NT which is huge, I have not notice my >drive taking longer than his drive takes and we both have comparable >systems as far as speed it concerned. However, when I bought mine I got >one with very low access time, so that may in itself make up the >difference in speed for loading software. Mine is something like 80ms >access time. Yes, especially DVDs are bad at this (some has in the same range as the first 1X CDs). But a newer CD can have better (mine has 65ms). >I just never could see wasting money to buy something faster that would >never be needed. You obviously don't use it much. I'm getting very tired of my CD-R that only reads in 8X :( >I am perfectly happy with this old 4X CDROM and will >only change it out when ever I get one of those DVD RAM drives. Those do >not have blazing CDROM read speeds either. You are aware that 1X DVD ~ 11X (IIRC) CD, right? The specs for reading CDs on them is also very good (something like 32X and up). A problem with them is (as I mentioned above) the long seek times on some of them, they are also very bad at reading data burned in CD-Rs. >For audio CDs you only need a 1X or 2X drive (I don't recall which the >audio CD speed is.) 1X (of course ). >Since most >CDROMs write trandfer rate is very slow, you can connect a SCSI CD >burner to a SCSI port coverter connected to a USB port and not lose any >speed. I don't think that USB can not keep up with something like 8X and above CD-Rs. USB 2.0 can on the other hand, and may be worth investigating as an alternative. Now all we need are drivers in DOS ;-) >This would be good for slow devices like CDROMs, (snip) Is 40X slow? I think 16X is fast. The others you mention are slow devices, but since you can't afford a SCSI HD (a 9.5GB costs more than a 46.1GB drive) there's not much use for it. I do recomend a SCSI CD-R since you'll probably have 0 (yes zero!) CDs to trash. Noone that I know who owns an IDE CD-R can say the same, and I had almost 100 busted CDs when I used some crappy IDE CD-R from HP that I told the store where I had bought it that I wanted a new SCSI CD-R instead so I could get one that worked. They took my old 2X back and gave me a new 4X. Of course they tried to complain a bit, but there are some laws that apply for the customers (here anyway). >What if >you were to disable one of the drives in the CMOS setup and enable the >one you want to use each time you want to change drives? I don't think that would work since some BIOSes find the CDs anyway. Wouldn't it be easier to load the driver for the CD you want in config.sys? >When I >first got my Syquest drive, they sent me an IDE version. I immediately >sent it back and exchanged it for a SCSI because that is what I had >ordered. Who knows what kind of problems I may have had with it. The IDE version would also cost around 100 USD less. But that's the closest a SCSI drive has come in diffrence with a IDE, the diffrence is bigger now. //Bernie