SimonC wrote on 2021-04-12, 20:31:This is my best find for the moment, pionner model DVR 109XLB1 :
https://forum.cdrinfo.pl/attachments/f15/75796d1455111566-pion […]
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This is my best find for the moment, pionner model DVR 109XLB1 :
If you like that one there's another model that looks the same which you can add to your search. From a quick look in my drivers/etc archive mine goes by the names DVR-108 and DVR-A08XL. It looks the same, don't know what the hardware differences are from the 109.
Do you care about burning? Note that these do not have firmware support for newer cheaply available discs. This means it will use a generic burn strategy instead of one that's tweaked for the particular disc. If you scan such a disc for burn quality the results might be poor. I think I only checked that for DVDs though, not CDRs.
I have good burn quality results with Taiyo Yuden 8X DVD+R (which are an older disc that everybody put emphasis on supporting) but not the cheap Riteks I bought at Fry's a few years ago. Those same Riteks worked a lot better on a newer drive but the DVR-108 hated them due to the old firmware.
The same situation likely applies to other older drives also. The TYs I mentioned are probably a safe bet for almost anything and might still be available from whoever owns that product line today, but the Japan plant that made them originally has closed.
As far as scanning discs for burn quality - these Pioneers aren't good for that. They aren't well supported by Nero CD-DVDSpeed or whatever that program is called. I tried 1 or 2 other programs but bottom line I found some other drives worked better for scanning burn quality. But the quality of the burns is good if you use discs that they recognize (I just had to check them using a different drive).