In keeping with my policy of staying way behind the bleeding edge of technology, the only DVD burner I have is a stand-alone Sony unit that I feed video from my camcorder or DVD player.
What do you fellow lurkers recommend for an external DVD burner that's easy to move from PC to PC?
Thanks! ...Jim Thompson
-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
As they're only worth about $17* each these days I don't bother moving them and just have one in every box. USB keys are easier for netbooks. I do have a Samsung SE-S084 external drive that powers itself off of TWO USB ports, but I think I only used it once or twice. IIRC, it worked fine.
*newegg today,either IDE or SATA (Samsung/Liteon) with free shipping.
I have a Sony USB DVD RW recorder. Model DRX-70U-R. It cost me close to a $100 a few years back. Newer models (and cheaper) are available.
Although this is an external USB connected burner, it is not USB powered (it takes 2 Amps @ 5.2V from a wall wart). I'm not sure if there are burners that will burn, or maybe just play off USB power. But I was limited in my selection by the need for Linux support. So there might be a world of technology out there that I'm missing.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------
Avoid anything with a parallel port. USB is the way to go these days.
-- Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools...
=A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson
=A0 =A0| =A0 =A0mens =A0 =A0 |
=A0 | =A0 =A0 et =A0 =A0 =A0|
=A0|
=A0 =A0 =A0 |
Visit:
Best $17 I ever spent.
I've never seen a parallel port DVD burner.
-- Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is enough left over to pay them.
CD writer, yes. Eg. HP 7200e, but that's probably more than a decade old.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
-- Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is enough left over to pay them.
I have a couple parallel port CDROM drives, but the idea of using a parallel port for a DVD? It would be a very slow & painful process.
-- Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is enough left over to pay them.
"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
My laptop plays dvd/cds but will not record them
I bought a cheap cable that connects any type of parallel IDE drive (2.5",
3.5" and DVD drive) from Newegg for $20. Bought it originally to salvage files from a friend's dead laptop. Cable came with an external 5V/12V power supply for bigger drives. I keep an old DVD burner (that I rescued from a scrap pile), in the car and can now burn the occasional disk on the road. A bit cumbersome but does the trick. Oppie
And why would that be? In this case, a parallel port moves 8 bits at a time compared with 1 for USB. The drive can cache as much as it wants and in a flat out race, USB would always loose.
But the transfer rate of the parallel port is ultimately limited by its clock rate, which for backwards-compatibility reasons is going to be limited to the clock rate of the original ISA bus, which was 8Mhz. ECP transfer mode could do something like 1.5 MB/s, which even USB 1.0 full speed easily beats.
I'd think if the device driver writer knows his/her elbow from a hole in the ground, the parallel port could probably run at the speed of the internal data bus, which is what? 133 MBPS?
Thanks, Rich
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Do you mean IDE? I have 3 of those DVDs because they're older than SATA. The write speed is limited by the disk, not the interface. True parallel port --- I shudder to think of such a thing.
G=B2
Then you should have no problem showing where to buy them and to advise us which, of several hundred models is the best.
-- Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is enough left over to pay them.
An old fart like JT should get a Zip drive.
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the pci bus might be at 133MHz, the parallel port is on an ~8MHz "ISA bus" emulated somewhere in the corner of an ic in the chipset
a parallel port doesn't really need much of a device driver, you write to a register and the data is output on the pins. you can write to it assembler if you like it still won't go any faster than few million writes a second
any who, just like real serial ports it is close to extinction and almost no new computers especially laptops have it
-Lasse
When somebody said to avoid parallel drives, I think they must have meant IDE (Parallel ATA) not VIA parallel printer port.
Perhaps they were looking forward and thinking that PATA interfaces are becoming rare and being replaced by SATA interface devices.
But when you buy a $20 device do you need to plan to move it to newer computers that might not have a PATA port??
Most mainboards with SATA ports now also have at least one PATA port for the CD/DVD R/W drive.
Those PATA/SATA and SATA/PATA converters look like they might be handy in the future.
Lots of this ignores the point Jim made about EXTERNAL.
eSATA might be slicker for external drives, but it's not THAT hard to finagle a short IDE PATA ribbon cable out to the external drive either. ( With or without connectors )
Personally I prefer internal CD burners but some machines just don't have the bay space for them.
My desktop systems are compact enough that they need DVD R/W drives are 1/2 or 1/3 height made for laptops. Rather than spend the $40 to buy these low profile drives I might dig out my old IoMega external DVD burner.
You know, IoMega, the folks who did the Bernoulli Box removeable platter hard disks WAY back in the late 1970's and the Zip drives in the 80's...
Iomega's external DVD burners are a bit pricey but superb quality. Notice 8.5 Gig?
I like them better for these:
Me too. A parallel port, by definition was the printer port. IDE/PATA is a bus.
-- Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is enough left over to pay them.
It's all about marketing.. Saving copper etc...
It's easy to convince people that a good method is not good by simply not implementing a faster version of it and instead, make a single wire system that uses less material and say it's better technology..
Sheep and lambs. what a herding., that's it!
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