Write R / Write RW / Read
I had a Yamaha 8/4/24 and it died after 2 years of not heavy use. I've heard Yamahas aren't the most reliable CD-Writers. And the one you linked to is used...

Thanks for the info - so this drive is a 6x speed reader. That's quite slow, for a "modern" device which can perform RW operations. Although slow (hopefully quiet) is what I'm after really, so that's good!

I wonder if any CD-ROM writers were ever made which only had 4x reading capability. I doubt it. Perhaps this Yamaha model is the slowest drive I could ever hope to find. I might get one. After all, they are only 99p each, which is about 1 euro.

I had a 6 /4/16 SCSI model. It also died after very light use.

If you want a good drive, get a Plextor.

If you're looking for decent SCSI drives, I have a few spare Pioneer 4X drives that do a good job with CD-R media. Though I wouldn't recommend shipping out of the US.

I'm afraid I've chickened out of using SCSI. All my retro rigs are IDE based. Thanks for the offer though! 😀

I'd just like to add to this thread of conversation - up till now, I've been using a new modern IDE DVD-ROM reader device (manufacture date 2007), without any problems. I've tested this unit out on 486s and above. It works great as a "slave device" on a 40 pin cable, the master device being various HDDs. I'm finding it difficult to obtain another new IDE DVD-ROM reader device, as the online retailers seem to now only stock IDE DVD RW drives. If I get one of these RW units instead, will it still work OK - just like my current read only drive does? Thanks a lot people. 😀

Most of the time it should work, but there's a possibility that you need a non-generic driver for it (and the manufacturer might not provide it).

GL1zdA wrote:

Most of the time it should work, but there's a possibility that you need a non-generic driver for it (and the manufacturer might not provide it).

Yes I see. Up till now, I have been successfully using the ubiquitous "oak" CD-ROM driver, for more or less every optical drive I've ever used! Plus, on various MS-DOS boot-up disks available on the net (from bootdisk.com for instance), there are also the fairly well known CD1.sys, CD2.sys, CD3.sys, CD4.sys drivers available. I'm guessing (hoping) that one of those five drivers will work, even with a very modern RW drive.

I currently have Yamaha 8/8/24x. When it got to me it was used and in bad condition. I disassembled it, cleaned it, assembled it again and it works perfectly ever since. The only thing that I hate about it is the active cooling in the back. The cooler cannot be cleaned easily and it sounds really bad.

But the drive works.... and you cant beat the price - I got this one for free 😉

elfuego wrote:

But the drive works.... and you cant beat the price - I got this one for free 😉

Nice price! 😉 😀 BTW, I bought one of those drives mentioned in the O.P., and it arrived today. I opened up the package...and lo and behold, the seller sent me a 52x speed drive! D'oh! 😒

retro games 100 wrote:

elfuego wrote:

But the drive works.... and you cant beat the price - I got this one for free 😉

Nice price! 😉 😀 BTW, I bought one of those drives mentioned in the O.P., and it arrived today. I opened up the package...and lo and behold, the seller sent me a 52x speed drive! D'oh! 😒

argh..

I don't know what has happened with ebay sellers lately..but during the past three months I've never experienced so much trouble with sellers...recieved wrong items, broken items etc...I'm almost fed up with buying anything thru Ebay

I think you should get a 12x. They are still in the CLV category meaning they'll be quieter than when everything went to CAV.

Actually you might want to buy one of these babies. Kenwood TrueX CDROM available in 42X, 52X and 72X. Spins at ~10-12X equiv so it's quiet, uses a prism to read multiple tracks at once. One big caveat is that some of them don't do CDRs well at all. I've seen this first hand. But for plain 'ol reading pressed disks they rock. Even the 42X is faster than any other CD reader I've used (even modern stuff) cuz it'll do 42X across the whole CD.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem … em=330280694245

http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/artic … 28g09/28g09.asp

Ok so I bought myself one of those Kenwood TrueX 42X CDROMs from my previous post. It occurred to me that I had one back in '99 or so and it was not only very fast, but also very quiet, and that's what I want for the old streaming CDROM games. My 'ol Toshiba 12X IDE puked the other day. 🙁

As long as you stick with pressed CDs, it rocks. Don't get one if all you want to use is CDRs!! While it probably can manage to read one, it only pulls off between 8x and 24x.

Here's a bench I ran on it reading a real Splinter Cell CDROM. Note how it reads 40X or better across the entire CD? How many CDROMs have you seen that can do that?! And do it with only a low pitched hum cuz it's spinning at the equivalent RPM of a usual 12X drive or so. It's actually CLV instead of CAV and its RPM decreases for outer tracks. It becomes almost silent. Seeks are rather audible but it's not even remotely as annoying as a modern high speed CAV drive.

They are quirky drives for sure. But they are also rather unique in what they can do. Only buy if you are ok with running into some issues.

I'm afraid I seem to have learnt another lesson the hard way. I bought several DVD-ROM burners from a popular online retailer, and to my dismay each unit (Samsung, LG, and Sony) is marked with a message saying "Audio not available" (or words to that effect). I guess this is to severely disrupt attempts at duplicating audio CDs? The absence of audio capability on these drives was not mentioned in the online item desciptions. 😒 Nevertheless, I gave each unit a quick test using DOS 6.22. All drives were successfully initialized with the "oakcdrom.sys" driver. The Sony drive span the loudest and seemed the worst in terms of build quality. The Samsung was the best in this regard. In fact, I've since ordered a Samsung DVD-ROM Reader unit, the SH-D162D model. I'm hoping it will be of similar build quality to the burner unit. I checked with the ebay seller that it had audio functionality, and he said that it did.

Regarding the Kenwood TrueX 42X CDROMs, they look mighty fine. 😀 It's difficult for me to order one however, as shipping to the UK is understandably a bit pricey.

that probably means the dont have an connector to the sound card you can still get the audio over the ide bus

Davros wrote:

that probably means the dont have an connector to the sound card you can still get the audio over the ide bus

I connected up an audio cable from my Sound Blaster to each of the audio sockets on the back of the burner drive units. I then tested each burner unit with an SSI DOS RPG game called "Thunderscape". In this game, there's a bit early on where audio CD music kicks in - useful for testing purposes. For the burner units, I just heard silence. To make sure there was no incorrect SB mixer setting, I swapped out the burner units for a DVD-ROM read only unit, and the audio worked fine. Regarding getting the audio to work using the ribbon cable instead, I'm not too sure if that would work for a "pure DOS" game - maybe you could get this to work inside Windows 9x?

well I assumed you wouldnt try to copy audio cd's in dos 😉

I just tested a Samsung DVD-ROM reader, model SH-D162D, and it won't work when used with my Acculogic sIDE-2/CD CD-ROM ISA-based controller card. When I boot up using a DOS boot disk, it can't "see" the DVD-ROM drive. If I simply swap out the SH-D162D unit with any other DVD-ROM unit, it works.