Posted by Voinin on 05/04/06 17:45

Bob wrote:
> On Thu, 04 May 2006 07:23:32 -0700, Voinin <vboing@boing.biz> wrote:
>
>> Sure, it's old. But if you read the description of the product, that's
>> what it says it supports (as well as PIO mode 4 which is even
>> "ancienter".) It doesn't support UDMA66. Hence my question.
>
>> Here's the link to the description for further analysis if you wish:
>> http://www.directron.com/nd3550abeg.html
>
> I am going to have to talk to Juan at Directron about that. Something
> is not right.
>
> I looked in Device Manager and all it said about the IDE channel that
> my 3540 is connected to is that it is UltraDMA. I know my mainboard
> supports UDMA 133, so I believe the writeup on the Directron website
> is in error - probably a transcription from a much earlier product
> that did support UDMA33.
>
> Anyway, are you sure that UDMA33 is all that bad for the 3550? I would
> not know since I have never put one on a slow computer.

I had a motherboard with a chipset that would not support DMA66 or 100
on the secondary channel. (I'm never gonna get another ECS motherboard,
thank you!) When trying to burn 16X on that, I would get all kinds of
buffer underrun situations, using a Pioneer A09XL drive. (No errors
during the burn or verify, but the discs would have problems playing on
the player hooked up to the TV.) So DMA33 is not good for burning at
16X. I upgraded my motherboard and I didn't have buffer problems after
that. But still the discs weren't not of the quality I wanted. So now
I burn at 8X. It works much better that way.

Which makes this whole discussion inconsequential in the long run. It's
interesting, but in the end, I'm still burning at 8X even on the
Pioneer. But I still want to know why they're producing DMA33 drives
rated at 16X.

--
You know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like women. You just have to
read the manual and press the right button.

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