Another one bites the dust...

[sheets]

So...I get home to use my new Pioneer 106D (3rd one in 30 days) and the drive door won't open. The Case is seeing power but evidentally the drive isn't getting power. It's a dual 12v/5v power supply and evidentally one line isn't going through.

I'm about ready to give up.

[andyg]

Sorry to hear that, sheets.

It because of this ...

"We hesitated in the past, but we cannot say that anymore," said Hiroyuki Mineta, the chairman of Pioneer's Shanghai subsidiary, as he stood on the factory floor where hundreds of Chinese workers were building 11 different types of DVD recorders. "We have to overcome our fear or we won't be able to survive in the market."

... or the external firewire enclosure (the other post).

I remember the talk when the A05 came out, how hot it runs with recommendation not to mount anything directly above or below the drive.
My A05 (one of the first on the market) still runs fine to this day.
But I can't say that about my 80 Gb, WD Hard Drive, it lasted only 2 months under heavy video editing. When the PC didn't boot up, I opened the side & tried to pull it out, the HD almost burned my fingers. That's how hot it was.
Right now I have a small fan unit with heat sink attached to the HD directly - no more fried HD.

[jimmy basushi]

a friend of mine works in repairs, and those machines have only been out 2 months and they are already getting them in. be prepared for a giant wait on parts.

some yamahas come like that too, ive heard stories about ones that dont even work off the shelf like yours.

edit, said somethin silly

[sheets]

I should have posted back here right away. One of the pins on the power supply connector had broken off. It's a poor design for an external power supply. Basically, the manufacturer of the case didn't want to put the circuitry in the case to create separate 5 & 12 volt lines so that's done in the wall-wart but then they have a small, 5 pin connector. The problem is that the registration pin on the connector is very flexible so it's easy to bend or break a pin in the power supply. I guess I'll exchange it for another one.

After doing a little bit more research on the old case, I've heard that the problem is the small buffer size in the USB/IDE conversion which causes problems with some devices.

[sheets]

Bought a replacement drive (my 4th). This one is the OEM version of the previous one. Same drive but the enclosure does not have an LED on it. I wonder why they made the change?

Another interesting thing, the Pioneer 106D drive has firmware rev 1.08.

[leisuredoc]

I bought my 'A04 three years ago, never flashed it to new firmware, and by my estimates it has logged well over 400 burns to -R media. I'm not too concerned about 4X or 8X cuz I think you get the best results in any case with 1X. I just hope there isn't some revolutionary change in media that will force me to buy a "Blue Ray" burner or something like that!

Cheers!

leisuredoc
:D

[Rassilon]

Originally posted by andyg
Sorry to hear that, sheets.

But I can't say that about my 80 Gb, WD Hard Drive, it lasted only 2 months under heavy video editing. When the PC didn't boot up, I opened the side & tried to pull it out, the HD almost burned my fingers. That's how hot it was.
Right now I have a small fan unit with heat sink attached to the HD directly - no more fried HD.

To keep an eye on HDD and System temperatures (Assuming that you have SMART HDD's and system monitoring chips) try http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

[theReal]

I bought a Pioneer 106/A06 a few months ago because at work we have a bunch of Pioneer drives (A04, A05 and A06) and they are all working fine. No problems at all, perfect burners

[Joergen]

My trusty A03 that cost about 700 USD 3 years ago is churning away discs at 2X daily. So Pioneer IS capable of manufacturing quality drives if the "price is right" :D

Could be thanks to the little fan in the A03 that keeps it cool while burning.