The only problem is the two devices will be using shared bus resources, so copying from optical drive to zip disk will be potentially bottlenecked.

gdjacobs wrote:

The only problem is the two devices will be using shared bus resources, so copying from optical drive to zip disk will be potentially bottlenecked.

Are you sure that's the only issue? What if I used a DVD burner that is significantly newer than my ZIP drive? (Example: DVD drive from 2009, ZIP drive from 1999) I seem to recall issues when Master/Slaving IDE optical drives that were designed at different ATA standards. (ATA33 paired with ATA100, for example)

Not an issue since the introduction of ATA2/EIDE, apparently.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confTiming-c.html

However, the channel is still shared. One device has to clear the channel before the next can transfer data or a command.

Interesting though I remember the time I paired a 2003 CD-RW with a 1997 CD-ROM and one of the drives would not work. This was on an old AMD 751 Irongate system from 2000. The two drives did work when I used them separately.

Pairing my DVD burner with my ZIP won't affect burn speeds, but slower performance will occur if I copy data from my DVD to my ZIP?... Do I have it right?

its not uncommon to have much older devices sharing with newer devices.
9 out of 10 times its fine, there is always the occasional device or combination that doesn't like working but for the most part IDE devices are fine with each other.

Re burn speeds, your almost right.
Its the same cable, so anytime both devices are used it has to share the same cable. So if you copy data between the CD and Zip or try to copy data from both the CD and Zip to somewhere else (network, hard drive whatever) it still need to split time up to allow each device to send a chunk of data, kind of like cars going opposite ways on a 1 way road. each directing needs to give way to the other from time to time.

chinny22 wrote:

its not uncommon to have much older devices sharing with newer devices. 9 out of 10 times its fine, there is always the occasion […]
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its not uncommon to have much older devices sharing with newer devices.
9 out of 10 times its fine, there is always the occasional device or combination that doesn't like working but for the most part IDE devices are fine with each other.

Re burn speeds, your almost right.
Its the same cable, so anytime both devices are used it has to share the same cable. So if you copy data between the CD and Zip or try to copy data from both the CD and Zip to somewhere else (network, hard drive whatever) it still need to split time up to allow each device to send a chunk of data, kind of like cars going opposite ways on a 1 way road. each directing needs to give way to the other from time to time.

Re burn as in rewritable CD burning? (CD-RW)

Re as in Regrading
Data is Data, IDE cable isn't going to know the difference

First of all, it shouldn't be a problem setting them both up as CS.

Second, as others have said, you'll have performance issues when trying to access your DVD burner and the ZIP drive at the same time.

Third, the performance is worse when transferring data between the DVD and the ZIP drive. The data need to go to the IDE controller first, then it goes to the destination. In the meantime, the source device is just sitting there until the data is written on the other device and the bus is clear. This is why SCSI was awesome back in the day. In a SCSI bus, data is transferred directly from device to device on the same cable. Your system remains responsive, and there's no waiting for the bus to clear.

As bad as that sounds, it's what we had to deal with back in the day.

I remember having to put each HDD on it's own channel if I wanted the best speeds. The optical drive gets put on the 2nd HDD's channel to not slow me down if I install software froM CD to C:. I also have to remember to master my CDs on the C: drive before burning (otherwise potential coasters). Having to keep the devices and what channel they are on in mind when burning CDs was just a part of computing life in those days - at least for me. 😀

GuyTechie wrote:

First of all, it shouldn't be a problem setting them both up as CS. […]
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First of all, it shouldn't be a problem setting them both up as CS.

Second, as others have said, you'll have performance issues when trying to access your DVD burner and the ZIP drive at the same time.

Third, the performance is worse when transferring data between the DVD and the ZIP drive. The data need to go to the IDE controller first, then it goes to the destination. In the meantime, the source device is just sitting there until the data is written on the other device and the bus is clear. This is why SCSI was awesome back in the day. In a SCSI bus, data is transferred directly from device to device on the same cable. Your system remains responsive, and there's no waiting for the bus to clear.

As bad as that sounds, it's what we had to deal with back in the day.

I remember having to put each HDD on it's own channel if I wanted the best speeds. The optical drive gets put on the 2nd HDD's channel to not slow me down if I install software froM CD to C:. I also have to remember to master my CDs on the C: drive before burning (otherwise potential coasters). Having to keep the devices and what channel they are on in mind when burning CDs was just a part of computing life in those days - at least for me. 😀

"I also have to remember to master my CDs on the C: drive before burning (otherwise potential coasters)"

Oh really? Tell me more.

Because of the performance issues mentioned previously, the queue feeding the burner would sometimes dry up if the data source was sharing the same IDE channel. Older CD burners didn't have the capability of restarting the write in the correct position or pausing the write like modern ones do, so the CD-R would be corrupted if that happened.