I don't meet requirements

[bobby8798]

I want to install a 4X+/-DVD burner onto my computer, but it does not meet the recommended requirements.

Most DVD burners require a 700M P3 to run

eg.
http://www.provantage.com/buy-7lace00c-4x-dvd-rw-cd-drive-ide-internal-mac-software-lacie-drives-300678-shopping.htm

I have a P2 300 Mhz, 128M ram, win98se, and 2 HardDrives
5600 rpm on drive C
the other is a matrox 80G 7200 rpm on drive D

If I install the 4x DVD writer, will it just burn slower, maybe at 2x, or will it not work at all?

Some ads indicate the requirements for a 4x DVD burner is only win98.

[Kedirekin]

Most likely those requirements are more for the bundled software than for the drive itself.

However, a 300 MHz PII machine is quite old. I'm not sure it can keep up with 4x burning. At the very least, I recommend you test your IDE throughput. I believe it needs to be well above 5 MBytes/sec (40 Mbits/sec) to support 4x burning. In fact, if you have to put the burner on the same IDE channel as the HD you're burning from (which is not recommended), I think the throughput needs to be well above 10 MBytes/sec.

Sorry I can't recommend a benchmarking suite, but I haven't used one in years. You should be able to find free benchmarking software on the net if you don't have any handy.

[Doom9]

4x burners will most definitely work on operating systems more modern than Win98. Heck, Microsoft wants you to upgrade to XP and if you don't have at least W2K you should heed their advice (no, MS is not paying me for that - I'm personally convinced that only W2K and XP are good Microsoft operating systems if there's such a good thing as good software from MS).
I suspect that you'd have to restrict yourself to 1x or 2x burning because your hardware might not be able to keep up with feeding the burner enough data.

So, I think it's safe that you can buy and use a burner, but it will most likely not be able to perform as good as on recent hardware.

[bobby8798]

I am able to burn at up to 32X on a CD-R from the CD burner.

Does this provide enough information about IDE throughput?

I am using the latest ASPI v4.6.1021

[Kedirekin]

If I'm not mistaken 1x DVD throughtput is approximately 8x CD, so 4x DVD would be 32x CD.

On the face of it, 32x CD would seem to be fast enough. I'm still a little leary though. It just feels risky burning at 4x on aged hardware. I guess the only way you're going to know for sure is to try it and see if you get underruns.

[maa]

I would suggest you do it !

If your DVD Data is being delivered from your 7200 drive and your OS is well tweaked and not full of anti virus type crap (also no MS writing programs that eat all your memory before the OS gets there, all animation stuff turned off etc. - you know the game...)
then all you need to make sure of is that DMA33 is working correctly as the data thoughput is not hard on the CPU at all in this mode.

-
I've been building and tweaking Recording Studio computers (Analog input multichannel HD recording) since the PII 200 came out and the thoughput required there is much larger than a 4x burn requires.
In this discipline Win98se (or better Win98lite) will outperform W2K and XP even on the newest machines.
-

Go for it....

[bobby8798]

Would it make a difference if I put the 7200 rpm hard drive onto
IDE-2 bus along with the DVD burner?

At the moment, both Hard Drives are on IDE-1 bus.

I will use Maxell 4x DVD+R media. If it is not possible to burn at 4x, then I will try at 2x.

Will there be any problems burning at 2X?

Is DVD+R media so special that it can only burn at a specific rate unlike CD-Rs which can burn at any rate up to the max rated speed?

[maa]

Don't put the HD on the same cable as the burner - thats asking for trouble.
Burn at 4 x - they're all burn proof so if there is a transfer speed problem you'll notice because it takes longer thats all.

[The Belgain]

I agree with maa that as long as you don't have a horrifically bloated install of windows, you should be absolutely fine burning at 4x (or even 8x). It might be a good idea to avoid using the computer too much while burning though, and also possibly look for burning software with more modest specifications (I'm sure there are plenty around).

Of course if you're hoping to do a lot of DVD encoding/authoring etc on that PC, you may find it sluggish from that point of view...

[bobby8798]

Thanks everyone.

That will be my Xmas present

I will be using EZCD Creator 6

I'm using the DVD as an alternative to the CD
just to save more data; actually movies.

eg. I can burn 6x700M movies on the DVD disk, and watch those movies on my pc

Megabytes for megabytes, it is cheaper now to store data on a DVD than on 700M CD disks.