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SCSI vs. IDE Burner

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As you may have read, I'm planning to do a wipe and reinstall on my computer over our Christmas break. I'm upgrading from Win98SE to WinME. I'm starting to think over the hardware in my computer and trying to decide if I need or want to add/remove any hardware.

My video, sound, and network cards are fine. I've got 2 hard drives - one 20 gig and one 8 gig, so I'm all set there. Although this time I'm making my 8 gig a MP3 drive!! I've got a DVD Rom which I'm going to keep. I'm removing the TV Tuner card since it's a piece of crap and I have to print out 1 1/2 pages of instructions to install the thing. I also have a Phillips IDE CD-RW Burner. 

I didn't think I'd use the burner that much. But then I got into MP3's and found out I could make my own CD's! What fun I'm having with that! I absolutely LOVE making up my own special mixes. I enjoy putting the specific songs on a CD and in the order I want. I'm tired of buying a CD of 'Songs from the Eighties' for example, and listening to a song that I detest. Plus, I've been able to put 2 music CD's on one burnable CD. What a deal! A two-fer!! 

So, I started burning my own CD's. The only problem is that I'm making a lot of frisbees. Making a frisbee is when there is a problem with the burn and it fails. You can't start over with the same CD. So if a burn fails, you open up the burner, pull out the CD, and throw it like a frisbee at the trash can. Good thing they're only about a buck a piece.

Now, when I do a burn, I CAN'T DO ANYTHING ELSE! I mean it. I can't open my mail, surf the web, play solitaire, or anything. When I start a burn, I actually leave my computer and go do something else until it finishes. And it really ticks me off because here's Mr. PuterGeek bragging about how he can do a burn and play Quake 3 at the same time when we both have the same CPU and the same amount of memory. Why can he but not me? He has a SCSI burner.

His SCSI burner has a 4 meg memory cache and my IDE has only 1 meg cache. There are major differences between SCSI and IDE to be mentioned here. I asked PuterGeek for a SIMPLE explanation of the differences and I stopped him after 5 minutes. So I'm not going there.

The long and short of all this is that the quality of the burner and it being SCSI makes all the differences in whether or not I'll make frisbees. So over Christmas, Santa PuterGeek is getting me a Plextor SCSI burner! In his opinion, it's the best and well, I'm worth it!

So, after I wipe and reinstall and get all my apps installed, I'll be playing with my new burner and making all sorts of CD's. I just hope Santa remembers to get me lots of blanks.

Want to read part 2?

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Last Revised: 09/30/2000

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Thanks for the help Thomas!