"SCSI DVD-RW"

[Charlieman]

I spotted a "SCSI DVD-RW" external drive on eBay that was selling at a reasonable price. The enclosure was definitely Wide SCSI but the mechanism was ATA/IDE. I took a punt on it for use with my G4 9600.

It was a good bet. The drive was a decent NEC model attached to an Acard SCSI bridge (AEC-7220U, I think). All in all, a useful bit of kit.

 

[paws]

Hmm. What OSes supports such a beast?

 

[Quadraman]

SCSI and DVD don't usually go together, and when they do, they are usually expensive. What you sometimes find in that are authoring drives which require a unique media to record to. You can't use the generic DVD-RW discs you buy in 50 packs at the computer superstore. It has to say "authoring" on the media. The Pioneer DVR S101 and S201 are examples of authoring drives.

 

[coius]

SCSI and DVD don't usually go together, and when they do, they are usually expensive. What you sometimes find in that are authoring drives which require a unique media to record to. You can't use the generic DVD-RW discs you buy in 50 packs at the computer superstore. It has to say "authoring" on the media. The Pioneer DVR S101 and S201 are examples of authoring drives.

Actually, from what he said, it sounds like it's a regular ATA/ATAPI drive with an IDE Adapter to SCSI connected to the internal cable of a SCSI Case. if that's the case, all they did was put an ACARD IDE->SCSI Bridge on it.

driver issues may be more of a problem than anything else. If anything, OS X will see it, but OS 9 may be more tricky to get going. At least in the case of my (True)SCSI DVD-ROM.

Afaik, there were no SCSI DVD-RW Drives, since IDE was widespread, and pretty much every machine has IDE or SATA on it. It wouldn't make sense to put a DVD-RW on a SCSI Drive. DVD-RW Media isn't going to saturate a bus of even a ATA/133 bus. So I doubt it's SCSI...

 

[LCGuy]

Well it makes more sense than having a SATA DVD+/-RW. (of which I have seen PLENTY, and can't see the point of)

Either way, nice score, even just for the ACARD.

 

[paws]

Well it makes more sense than having a SATA DVD+/-RW. (of which I have seen PLENTY, and can't see the point of)

Why not? Then we can get rid of IDE on new hardware. No point in keeping the extra chips onboard...

 

[Unknown_K]

Do software programs have a hard time finding a DVD/RW drive on the SCSI chain (because of the adapter)?

 

[~Coxy]

Well it makes more sense than having a SATA DVD+/-RW. (of which I have seen PLENTY, and can't see the point of)

Installing OS X on a PC is a heck of a lot easier with a SATA DVD drive.

 

[benjgvps]

Why not? Then we can get rid of IDE on new hardware. No point in keeping the extra chips onboard...

Gah! Keep IDE! I just got a new-ish hard drive and dvd/cd-rw and want a new MB! Impossible...

 

[Charlieman]

Well it makes more sense than having a SATA DVD+/-RW. (of which I have seen PLENTY, and can't see the point of)

SATA DVD drives are being manufactured so that motherboard manufacturers can drop IDE/ATA support. A SATA drive of any kind will cost no more to make nowadays than IDE/ATA, but the motherboard manufacturer can save a dollar or two in manufacturing costs. That matters to small system builders.

Either way, nice score, even just for the ACARD.

Well I was kind of gambling that there would be one in there. The Acard bridge that I bought new 18 months ago cost about £50 including shipping (and that was a good price at the time). With this deal I got a decent SCSI enclosure, a useful SCSI cable and terminator, an Acard and a reasonable IDE/ATA DVD writer for £25 total. Not cheap but I'll definitely find a few uses for the Acard.

The drive mech is an NEC ND-1300A which is DVD+R/RW but I can live with that for a while. Maybe swap the mech for DVD-RAM so that I have decent pre-OS X support?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Yup, modern systems that I'm dealing with at work no longer have ATAPI optical drives as "officially supported". Yeah, they'll work; but if you have a problem, we won't help you with it. We'll tell you to try a SATA optical drive; and if that doesn't work, give us a call back.

As for pre-OS X support, just get ahold of an older copy of Toast.

 

[LCGuy]

Yeah, I can understand that a lot of people want to drop IDE these days, its just that I think a SATA DVD+/-RW drive is a bit of a waste of a SATA port, that I'd rather use for a HDD.