If you intend to play games that loads data from the CD during play, you might actually want to consider a slower drive. Faster drives take longer time to spin up before the data can be accessed.

If you just want a good cheap commercially available DVD burner, the Lite-On iHAS124 is great. It's of course a SATA drive, so you might need an adapter aswell, the Startech IDE2SAT2 is my first choice.

biohazardx9 wrote on 2024-05-27, 18:21:

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-27, 01:19:

I wouldn't be doing any burning in Win98 unless really necessary. Much better off using a more modern and stable machine.
Other then that agree with the above, no need to geta anything special and analogue audio cable is desirable if using for your games as well.

I have done a few image to cd burring using alcohol 120% fine.
as long as you have a decent burner and a decent machine and providing you leave it to do it's thing it'll be fine from my experience.

progman.exe wrote on 2024-05-27, 19:45:

Ah, the entry to the coaster-casino was about 10 quid when I got my first writer. […]
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Ah, the entry to the coaster-casino was about 10 quid when I got my first writer.

Want to burn something? Reboot. IIRC hold shift at boot to prevent anything running at start up. Exit any stuff that does start up and is not actually necessary, even or especially, anti-virus.

Then wait a couple of minutes to allow the machine to settle down. Confirm screen saver is off, because even the load of blank.scr can be too much for 9x.

Now, the CD burn can be attempted..... my quad speed Mitsumi was about 15 minutes to burn a full disk of data, and probably 5+ of faffing about with sessions. And it was fond of failing right at the end, though the annoyance-bias makes those incidents appear prevalent.

Asking 30 minutes of uptime from 9x was always a bit much 😀 When I finally got hold of NT4 (yay to CD writers 😀 ), it was soooo much better.

progmans experience is pretty much what it was like back in the day when the PC was your daily driver but as biohazardx9 says even now you have to make sure the PC isn't doing anything else to interrupt the burn process.
It'll be fine for a quick one off but any NT variant of windows even on the same hardware will decrease the risk to almost nothing

Well, I'm afraid I do not have much experience about the "cheapest" drive.
Personally, I prefer TEAC, Plextor and Pioneer. The TEAC and Plextor are supposed to be the so called "professional devices", thus maybe a Pioneer drive is much easier to find.

Just few weeks ago, I purchased a brand new Pioneer DVD drive, the model is DVD-130D.
It's not a burner, it does read dvd disc and provides the "analog out" signal.
Actually it's probably Pioneer's last DVD drive which provides the analog signal, and it's probably Pioneer's last IDE interface DVD drive.
I got this drive with an acceptable price -- $5.

Regarding the burner, let's just skip the CD burners, they're way too old and I doubt that they're still functional. So let's focus on the DVD burners.
The last model of Pioneer's IDE interface DVD burner is DVR-118. Which I do NOT recommend, because altough there's analog out interface on its case, this signal is NOT provided! How do I know this? Of cource because I've purchased 3 sets of it, two brand new, one 2nd hand. And none of them could play the CD tracks while playing the DOS games, such as the Quake, the Screamer, the Syndicate... Huh, I must be a real smart **s!!

The last DVD burner of Pioneer, which DOES HAVE the analog out function, I think is DVR-117. It's not easy to find a new set today, but if you could consider a nice 2nd hand drive, 117 and older models are well recommended.

All the other SATA burners and regular drives are NOT recommended for the same reason. Of course if don't mind the analog out function, these drives are still solid choise! Plus it's very easy to get a brand new one SATA drive today.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-28, 01:16:

progmans experience is pretty much what it was like back in the day when the PC was your daily driver but as biohazardx9 says ev […]
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biohazardx9 wrote on 2024-05-27, 18:21:

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-27, 01:19:

I wouldn't be doing any burning in Win98 unless really necessary. Much better off using a more modern and stable machine.
Other then that agree with the above, no need to geta anything special and analogue audio cable is desirable if using for your games as well.

I have done a few image to cd burring using alcohol 120% fine.
as long as you have a decent burner and a decent machine and providing you leave it to do it's thing it'll be fine from my experience.

progman.exe wrote on 2024-05-27, 19:45:

Ah, the entry to the coaster-casino was about 10 quid when I got my first writer. […]
Show full quote

Ah, the entry to the coaster-casino was about 10 quid when I got my first writer.

Want to burn something? Reboot. IIRC hold shift at boot to prevent anything running at start up. Exit any stuff that does start up and is not actually necessary, even or especially, anti-virus.

Then wait a couple of minutes to allow the machine to settle down. Confirm screen saver is off, because even the load of blank.scr can be too much for 9x.

Now, the CD burn can be attempted..... my quad speed Mitsumi was about 15 minutes to burn a full disk of data, and probably 5+ of faffing about with sessions. And it was fond of failing right at the end, though the annoyance-bias makes those incidents appear prevalent.

Asking 30 minutes of uptime from 9x was always a bit much 😀 When I finally got hold of NT4 (yay to CD writers 😀 ), it was soooo much better.

progmans experience is pretty much what it was like back in the day when the PC was your daily driver but as biohazardx9 says even now you have to make sure the PC isn't doing anything else to interrupt the burn process.
It'll be fine for a quick one off but any NT variant of windows even on the same hardware will decrease the risk to almost nothing

agreed, its funny that NT being older was better, but as you say NT has no dos reliance and the kernel was/is very different.
only reason you'd want to burn on 98 today really is for the fun of it. it's so easy to buy a cheap desktop/laptop and run win10 fot burning purposes.