Ok, I just a CD Read/Write drive for my computer. An internal one. Thing is, if I install it, it will replace my regular CD drive. I’ve heard rumors and such about how certain games and other programs sometimes won’t recognize a Read/Write drive.
Should I have doubts about having a Read/Write drive as my only CD drive? Are there other problems or warnings I should be aware of?
My computer is a Gateway running on Windows 98. I should be able to find out any other information you’d need, as long as it isn’t too technical.
Most CD writers have slower read speeds that regular CD roms, but it shouldn’t make any difference for games.
Don’t you have enough room to have both CD drives at the same time? Your computer will support 4 IDE devices (cd drives and hard drives, floppy drives are not IDE devices).
mblackwell is correct. You should set them up as follows:
Open your comptuer’s case and examine the ribbon cable (the flat, often gray cable with a wide connector) coming out of your existing CD drive. If that cable has a free connector, great. At this point, make sure you also have a free power connection. This is typically a white plastic plug with a red, a yellow and two black wires, identical to the one already plugged into your existing CD drive. If you don’t have a free large connector (as opposed to the smaller connectors used for floppy drives), you’ll have to go shopping for a splitter. Then go to step 4.
If the cable has only two connectors, one of which is in the CD drive and the other is plugged into the motherboard, yank this cable and hie over to the nearest computer store or tech-savvy friend’s house. Get a cable of the same specification with three connectors and enough length to it. Keep in mind that one edge of the cable will be red (this marks wire #1) and your replacement cable should try to match the alignment of your existing cable, i.e. picture a cable that can be plugged in without needing any twists. Go to Step 4.
If the cable has three connectors, but one of them is in your hard drive, remove the connection from your CD drive and go get another three-connection cable, as in Step 2. The cable’s connection to your motherboard should be one of two identical slots that may be labeled “IDE Primary (or 0, or 1)” and “IDE Secondary (or 1, or 2)”. Your hard drive should remain in IDE Primary. You will be connecting your two CD drives to IDE Secondary.
The back of a CD drive, where the cables go, also has jumpers that allow you to select which device is the “Master” and which is the “Slave”. It doesn’t matter which you assign to which role, so long as there is no conflict. If your existing CD drive was hooked up to IDE Secondary by itself, it is probably set as Master, so set the new drive as Slave. If the existing CD drive was sharing IDE pirmary with the hard drive (this is a rare but not unheard-of occurance), then it is probably set for Slave, so set the new CD drive as Master. CD drives should always be kept seperate from hard drives becuase the former degrades the performance of the latter.
Hook up the various cables (being sure that the red wire is always at position 1 - you should see tiny numbers where appropriate) and power connectors. Boot the computer. Watch for a message that says “Press DEL to enter setup” or something along those lines. Press the indicated key to enter your computer’s “BIOS setup” screen.
Go through the menus for “IDE devices” or “Auto-detect IDE devices” and let the computer “find” your drives. It should correctly identify your hard drive as Primary Master and your two CD drives as Secondary Master and Secondary Slave. If it doesn’t, shut the machine off and check your cable connections and jumper settings. Repeat process until successful or head explodes.
Check Windows Explorer to figure out how the drive letters have been assigned (you can test this by telling each drive to “eject”). Write the letters on the drives using a marker or letter stickers. Go to CD-writer manufacturer’s website and look into “firmware updates”, installing as necessary. Install CD-writer software.
Easier to just get an external cdwriter from ebay.com I would Get one that plugs into a parl port (has room for
the printer). I have one of those & its very easy to install. I don’t know how many open
ports or bays your computer has for an internal one.
Only problem with running of a parallel port is speed. Parallel ports can’t keep up with an IDE port. As for the games issue, there are a few that try to detect if it’s a CD-Burner and not allow it to be used. Only one I really remember doing this was Cossacks, and they released a patch right away to fix this. It’s the Safedisc 2 protection that usually does it, but it’s mostly fixed at this point. I use a CD-RW as my main CD-Rom unit, so it works, especially with games.
I still haven’t figured out CD writing. I wrote music files onto blank CDs, but they never play in any CD player or any CD drive. They do not function. I seem to have wasted money by installing a CD writer.
Nah, you’re probably doing one of two things: Either you’re writing them with a packet writer, like DirectCD, or you’re writing MP3s instead of WAVs. I personally use Nero to make Music CDs, but Easy CD will do just fine. Make sure any mp3s you have are converted to Wavs(Winamp handles this just great), then use the music cd setting in your app. Should allow you to drag and drop tracks to fill the CD. Burn it, making sure you finalize the image, and kaboom, you’ve got a music cd. It’ll take a time or two to get right, but once you learn, you’ll be cranking em out in no time.
To convert mp3s to wavs in Winamp, just hit ctrl + p. A list should come up. Click on output, and select “.wav out” (or something that resembles this).
Jomo, if your cd burning software is releatively new, you do not have to do any covertiong with Winamp or anything like that. What Program do you use (Whatever you do, do not use Direct CD). I suggest you download the free trial of Nero from http://download.com.com/3000-2140-10111529.html?tag=lst-0-1
Select Audio CD, drag over the MP3s, and burn. Thats it.
Or, do the same thing in Adeptec/Roxio Easy Cd Creator version 4 or higher. Just make sure you pick audio cd and not data cd.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you actually have to select “Audio CD” in whatever burning proggy you’re using, lest you end up with a data CD full of WAV files? Something about red (white?) book compliance and all that?
Going back to the OP, it’s probably to your advantage to have a CD-RW as your only CD drive as CD-RW drives are generally superior in reading burned CDs, especially if they’re CD-RWs.
I had an HP parallel port CD-RW, and it used huge amounts of CPU time when I was burning - if any other programs were running, they would run slowly and the burn wouldn’t work. However, it was great for ripping audio tracks from CDs without errors.
My biggest concern with using a CD-RW as your primary drive would be premature wear. A CD-RW drive usually has a shorter life expectancy than a CD-ROM drive to begin with, and if you’re using it for both reading and writing, that’s twice as much wear.
Yep, my HP 2x did it in 30 minutes. It really depends on the speed of your computer though.
The faster the computer, the faster they write, at least mine do.
For a true plug-and-play experience without involving the parallel port (which hopefully Microsoft will obsolete some day soon), could I recommend to you a cheap-o, $30 FireWire card from CompUSA? And then, of course, a FireWire CD-R/W? You’ll get faster-than-SCSI speeds (and faster than parallel and USB de facto), and have a good, external CD-R/W. Sometimes FireWire is called IEEE-1394 (cheapskate companies) and sometimes i.Link (Sony).
I went this route with my HP minitower, and it worked beautifully, even on my “Mac only” CD-R/W under XP.
However, having a minitower (no room for second CD drive) and having tired of swapping cables from the PeeCee to the Mac, I finally went the other route and installed a cheap-o $80 CD-R/W in place of the built-in CD drive. If you don’t have DVD and don’t care, it works beatifully, and it’s a little more convenient than the FireWire if you want to switch between computers.
Oooh, another benefit of the FireWire card is it opens the door for higher-speed scanners and Digital Video work.
I’m not going to get into why USB-2, despite the potential of faster speeds than FireWire, probably won’t be faster for the majority of people. I will say it’s got potential for people that know what they’re doing and keep up with knowing about technology.