Hunting For Slow CD-Writers

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Completely unable to find any substantial difference in writing quality when comparing high speed and low speed burns, I'm still interested in finding devices, which allow burning CD-Rs at slow speed for a completely different reason. The "best" you can get in this regard on currently available drives, is the Plextor PX-891SAF-PLUS – but note that it is not actually a Plextor (at least as far as I know it is a Lite-On). This overly expensive thing (which probably has nothing in common with previous "real" Plextor drives) offers write strategies of 8x for CD-R and 4x for DVD±R. This is slower than common, but faster than it should.

For normal CD/DVD writing I very much doubt low speeds are needed or helpful – at least I could find no evidence. This might have been different in the early 2000s. But, as said above, I'm still on the hunt for old writers supporting 4x for CD-R. Currently I have only about 5 of them. Only two of them I'm willing to lose by tinkering around (the others are pretty rare and valuable). Read-only drives from that time frame are much more common than writers. Hard to find at good prices. Those old models have the additional advantage, that they feature a chipset consisting of multiple dedicated chips: For firmware (and data processing to the host machine), for the AD conversion as well as EFM and Reed-Solomon decoding and for servo controlling. Currently available drives more or less do all the stuff in one single chip (and the PCB of a modern drive is minuscule compared to one from the late 1990s/early 2000s).

Flea market brought up a pretty early instance of a DVD±RW drive this time. For CD-R thankfully the speeds 8x and 4x popped up. The only fairly "new" drive beating this would be the Plextor Premium 2, which includes a 2x CD-R write strategy. No way I'm gonna pay several hundred €€€ for such a thing (let alone multiple of them).

I haven't mentioned the name of the mystery drive I bought Saturday. Why? Well. See for yourself in the first picture. How I would like to work with the professionals for once…

Write speeds for DVD-R:
DVD-R.png
Write speeds for DVD+R:
DVD+R.PNG
Write speeds for CD-R:
CD-R.PNG


Few people will care about this blog entry. Maybe @Alexander1970 and @SylverReZ?



Edit: Original packaging and bundled software (hopefully I made all software serials unreadable – else somebody could say I'm distributing "highly interesting warez")
DVD_drive 0001.jpg DVD_drive 0002.jpg

DVD_drive 0003.jpg DVD_drive 0004.jpg

DVD_drive 0005.jpg
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Comments

FAST6191
Rare and valuable old CD drives? That is a new one. I can understand 486s the generation or three after and whatnot being valuable but would have thought most drives from back then are about as a valuable as the hard drives everybody says ew no give me a CF card for. Only ones I would normally have considered would be anything custom (had one once that had a case you needed to put discs in that powered a Rover I think it was car diagnostics computer, said thing being iffy and the FPGA driven BIOS it had did not support IDE beyond the hard drive) or could be hard flashed for dumping/writing anything in the console modifying world (possibly any that could be used as a replacement but with ODEs on the rise then eh even then).

Afraid I gutted all mine for the lovely stainless steel rods that most of them have in them and motors about 5 years ago.
 
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CMDreamer
I've got a pair of Lite-On's CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-ROM? drives with max recording speed of 4X, but can't remember the exact model rn. Can't confirm the current working state of them though, as I haven't used them in more than 20 years.

Low recording speed drives were a must on the PSX/PS One era when using recorded CDs on my console.
 
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KleinesSinchen
FAST6191 said:
Rare and valuable old CD drives? That is a new one. I can understand 486s the generation or three after and whatnot being valuable but would have thought most drives from back then are about as a valuable as the hard drives everybody says ew no give me a CF card for.
Click to expand...
I'm afraid I don't understand what you want to say here. "Old stuff = worthless garbage" or what?
If refurbishing an old computer is done by replacing the HDD with some memory card and the optical drive with and ODE, what is the point of having an old computer in the first place? How about replacing the floppy drive with an emulator as well while being at it? Away with the bulky CRT!
Or… wait… we could as well fire up DOSBox and call it a day.

At some point hardware tends to gain some value. After "old garbage better-throw-it-away-now" comes "cool retro" or "vintage". Many elements of my video game collection cost literally pennies. Comparing this to what people now ask for on eBay for Game Boy, (S)NES…

Regarding optical drives. Some being expensive because of obscurity and rarity isn't surprising. In any niche you will find enthusiast being willing to pay for pretty much useless things. The most ridiculous prices are paid for Plextor (Premium) and maybe that Yamaha with disc t@2 function. I failed at even finding any offer for a Kenwood 72x TrueX a few months ago. Also rare might be this thing from Sony with Double Density CD or that one Sanyo HD Burn drive (owning none of all these).

FAST6191 said:
Afraid I gutted all mine for the lovely stainless steel rods that most of them have in them and motors about 5 years ago.
Click to expand...
Hope you did something interesting with it! How about this:
https://www.gaudi.ch/GaudiLabs/?page_id=652
(Wish I could do this. Sounds really good!)

CMDreamer said:
Low recording speed drives were a must on the PSX/PS One era when using recorded CDs on my console.
Click to expand...
The PS1 is precisely what I meant with "was unable to find any substantial difference when comparing high speed and low speed burns"
Even a CD-R burned in insane 19.2x to 48x CAV mode works as good in my PS1 consoles as a 4x burned CD-R.

My guess is that when burners got faster and faster, this was used as selling argument. Who offers the highest number? If the device was really able to handle the speed was not important for advertising. 2x, 4x, 8x… then came 24x, 32x, 40x, 48x, 52x… anybody going higher? Those first high speed burners probably f…ed up when trying maximum.
 
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CMDreamer
KleinesSinchen said:
[...]


The PS1 is precisely what I meant with "was unable to find any substantial difference when comparing high speed and low speed burns"
Even a CD-R burned in insane 19.2x to 48x CAV mode works as good in my PS1 consoles as a 4x burned CD-R.

[...]
Click to expand...
Well, if I'm not mistaken, the real point was about the quality of the recordable media, not really about the recording speed of the disk drive.

It was -still?- like a formula of some sort:

Bad quality recordable media + slow recording speed = Success (not always though).

Good quality recordable media + high recording speed = Success (again, not always).

Good quality recordable media + low recording speed = Success (most of the time, I'd say >95%).

That, and the working state of the drive's laser would allow us to enjoy more games.
 
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FAST6191
I get why people like old stuff, got plenty of it for all manner of things myself.

It was more that if slapping a CD/DVD drive in such things (as opposed to mounting isos via whatever means) that I would have thought slapping in whatever late stage (or indeed not quite late stage where the bottom had dropped out the market and people were making any old junk) IDE or SATA drive (possibly even IDE to SATA adapter to get it better still) you could get your hands on would be the standard approach similar to people using CF cards rather than chancing it with electro mechanicals decades past their prime (ROM drives going one further and adding optical into that mix, to say nothing of said drives also often being iffy with burned discs). The rest I am assuming was going almost hyperbolic.

As far as something fun then most of it (granted I had lot of drives -- people have given me old and variously dead computers since the 486 era was current and people were paying £100 to get them swapped out for pentiums by the local computer shop, though they called that upgraded. That also being the first time I threw out or sold much of anything. Or if you prefer it took me about 8 hours and I am good at unbuilding things and obviously no need to be delicate in this either.) is still sitting in my supply bins in the shed. Other parts are in all manner of things; precision ground and often matching stainless rods and pins are always useful.
 
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Alexander1970
I haven't mentioned the name of the mystery drive I bought Saturday. Why? Well. See for yourself in the first picture.
Click to expand...
That looks to me like it's from a cheap complete PC brand "Media Markt Network" from the late 90's.🤣

24733781-buzzfeed-de-3wec.jpg

There were often "No Name" devices installed.
 
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KleinesSinchen
Alexander1970 said:
That looks to me like it's from a cheap complete PC brand "Media Markt Network" from the late 90's.🤣

View attachment 366759

There were often "No Name" devices installed.
Click to expand...
What… The second reason for buying this was the original packaging (and the mentioned software).
I'll edit the blog entry and add a scan of this.

The old laptop used for showing the success of fooling ProtectDISC CD with a normal CD-R had that strange "e" symbol as brand name you showed with the old Media Markt ad.
https://gbatemp.net/blogs/video-proof-as-good-as-i-can-for-the-last-entry.18936/
(The symbol is not shown in the video, just for reference: The laptop I mean is on video. Computer from the year 1999)
 
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Alexander1970
KleinesSinchen said:
What… The second reason for buying this was the original packaging (and the mentioned software).
Click to expand...
It could be a Spare Part...left from a time long,long gone.
(I am familiar with the "Repairing Procedure these days,we had lot of Leftover Parts left in the Repair Workshop when this Brand was "gone"....)

I am pretty sure,Pinnacle did not sold such Drive Packages....🤔
 
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