cd burner requirements

[dstrand]

I have a dell optiplex gmt 5166, running Win 95b, 166 mhz, with 32MB Ram. It has 500 MB of room left on the hard disk. Installed a HP 9100 series cd burner(a 9150, actually), and it will only run at a 1X burning speed( which takes 75 min to complete!) System requirements for the burner ask for Win 95b, 200 mhz processor, and 32MB Ram. How can I get it to run faster without buffer underrun errors? (When the burner becomes starved for data because the hard drive can't get it to the burner fast enough) Would adding more memory help? Should I overclock the CPU so I can make up the missing 34 mhz requirement? Would a ATA cable help transfer the data more quickly? I should add that I disabled power management, all background running programs, ensured that the hard drive was not reading ahead, and that the cd burner has DMA disabled. It still will only do a 1X burn. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[Shadow2531]

I would get a little bit more memory if you can, at least have 64Mb. It might help to have a little more than 500MB left on your hard drive especially if the CD contents you were burning were greater than 500MB. You might want to defrag the hard drive if you haven't done that in a while.


You can try a different ide cable just to make sure the one you are using isn't bad.

As for the dma, some say you should never enabled dma for your burner. I myself have had the best results enabling DMA. Plus almost every burner manual recommends you enable DMA. Just not sure how win95 is going to like having dma enabled.

166Mhz should be fine, but I guess it depends on what software you are using to burn with. If you have nero, you can increase the ram buffer.

Also if you are burning audio, don't expect to be able to burn that fast.

How did you install the burner? ON which ide channel, with another drive or all alone?

 

[dstrand]

Thanks! I will try more Ram, and it did not matter if I had DMA enabled or not(same results) An ultra ATA cable might do the trick. The burner is on the first ide channel, the board is an AT, so it has two.(Only two storage devices in the system) What do you think?

 

[Shadow2531]

All I can say is more memory, bigger hard drive, and possibly overclock your system a little bit.


It is also possible that the burner is junk.

as for the ide cable. the standard ide cable that comes with a CD-Rw is an ultra ata33 cable(40-pin 40 conductor), just not an ultra 66/100/133 cable(more shielding 40 pin 80-conductor). There may be only 1 or 2 ultra 66 CDRWs that are sold anywhere so..

I don't think your problem is with the cable unless it is longer than 18" or if it is old. However you can try a newer ultra ata 80conductor cable if you want.

So you got your Burner on your primary ide channel as master and you hard drive on the secondary ide channel as master?

 

[dstrand]

Thanks! Yes the config for the hard drive is master on the secondary, and the cd burner as master on the primary ide channel. Should I try switching? I appreciate your help!

 

[Shadow2531]

Well usually is it common rule that the bootable hard drive be the master on the primary. However it doesn't have to be that way. Yeh you can try switching, but you will have to go into the bios>standard cmos setup>

and set the secondary ide controller master type to "none"

and then set the primary ide controller master type to your hard drive specs or auto detect.

and of course the slave types for the 2 would be none.

switching shouldn't make a difference, but maybe it will.

what do you have the cd rom supplemental cache set too?

system properties>performance>file system>cd rom ???