Back a few years ago, I bought my first CDR drive. I went with SCSI because at the time, there was a lot of talk about buffer underruns, etc. So I got an Adaptec AIC-7850 SCSI card and a Yamaha 8424S (8X) burner. I believe it was pretty top of the line back then. This was I think 4 years ago.

Anyway, it finally started to fail on me. Hell, it can't even read the discs it burns anymore So I am looking for a new drive. Specially looking for another SCSI drive, but this time I want it to have all the newer "features", such as correct EMF burning. Sadly, I discover that pretty much everyone is making IDE burners.

Here's a little sidebar. I have a Celeron 400. I can burn at 8X without a hicup while using my computer normally. This is without BurnProof or any other anti-underrun technology. I decided to make an experiment with a faster machine. At Purdue, every computer lab now has a CD burner. Most of these are P4 machines, don't know the frequency. Anyway, I went over there, downloaded an ISO from one of the local Linux mirrors and tried to burn it at 8X. The machine couldnt keep up! Maybe it was a fluke, but it is still impressive that my 5 year old machine can burn at 8X consistently.

So my question is... does anyone know of a good SCSI burner that can stand up to the IDE ones? Even if it is not as fast. If I don't find one, I most likely will go with a Lite-On.

Yup, I went the same way but got a Adaptec 27160 SCSI adapter with the same Yamaha burner. My burner gave out rather early, I doubt I burnt more than 200 discs on it. Turned me off Yamaha.

AFAIK Plextor is the only one still making SCSI burners - this model. But I think it is considerably more expensive than an IDE model. I was really hoping that the SCSI people would have had some sense to lower the cost to make SCSI as afordable as IDE but trust them to have the same attitude as RAMBUS: more expensive means better. All encept better is pretty useless if no-one is buying it. Anyhow SCSI has had its chance and it is going to die a slow death and they deserve it for not changing with the times. So I would strongly suggest you get the Lite-On burner - I have one now and I recommend it, and I usually don't recommend something unless I am very satisfied with it.

The performance and all the other benifits that SCSI offered have pretty much been matched by modern IDE controllers (and sometimes beaten SCSI). Current burners have reached their physical limit for burning speed so don't expect anything faster, DVD burners are also coming down in price quite rapidly - if you can wait a few months you may find a DVD burner is an attractive option considering the price you would pay for a SCSI CD burner. I also don't think you will find a DVD SCSI burner.

Gday..

if you find a teac.. scsi.. check it out..

my aprox. first burner.. was a teac 55s.
and it just resent started to make fuzz..
and it was the perfect audio burner..

Plextor 40x SCSI ... but there is no real CloneCD support and I really doubt if there is any benefit at all when buying this expensive drive ... IIRC, you can get a Plexwriter Premium AND an LiteOn 52327S for the same price range ...

Keep in mind...FireWire (1394) is a superset of SCSI. Even though USB2 is spec'd to be faster (480 Mb/s vs 400 Mb/s), I've read that FW outperforms USB2. FW should be up to 800 Mb/s anytime soon. I would agree that a SCSI based RW drive is overkill. FW/USB2 based external drives are a nice way to go. You can add them easily without taking up precious IDE ports (not a problem for SCSI B)). I have both a Yamaha RW F1 ext and a Sony DVD ext (hooked up via the USB2 ports).

SCSI will live a long and virtuous life. In higher end enviroments, there is simply nothing better.

xen-uno

I have a Sanyo BP5 which works great. 24x burning, and every program I tried suports it (nero,clondcd,cdrwin,etc.). I've burned hundreds of discs with no problems. They're hard to find, though.

Well gang... i bought a Lite-On LTR-52327S. Got it from Newegg for $45 shipped... hell can't beat that. It's even cheaper that the cheapo units in Best Buy.

Sigh, I guess my SCSI era is over for me It was good while it lasted. Thanks y'all for the suggestions tho!

Xenno, have you had any trouble getting your FW Yamaha working with EAC? I need to replace my 8X Yamaha SCSI burner and I absolutely refuse to use IDE or USB. I have never really liked IDE, my first CD-ROM was a SCSI NEC 3X and I have never wanted to go back. Just never liked the way IDE devices work. I can put up with IDE hard drives, but that's about it. I had a USB burner that I absolutely hated. Don't know if it was Win9x's problem or the drive, but it drove me nuts. I like FireWire, I guess because of it's similarity to SCSI, flexibility and the way it offloads the processing from the CPU like SCSI (unlike IDE or USB). I really like the looks of the Yamaha F1 external, but the SCSI version is nearly impossible to find and extremely expensive. If the FireWire version works with EAC without problems, I would like to try for that. If not, internal SCSI. I appreciate any feedback you can offer on this. Thanks.

Gday..

well. my choice.. back then.. was mainly coz..
the compatibility.
i used to (both isa & pci card) reinstall 486 machines
with 95.. (what a mess.. some of them had a HD. blocking.. on them..)

when it regards USB.. i simply don`t trust it.
easy to get a *issue* with it.

firewire is extreme.. but it ain`t a standard yet..
but if you have firewire.. and you find a burner..
go for it..

moody...

Hit the Ahead (Nero) site and download their ASPI version and place it in the EAC directory. Should be as simple as that. Now when you run EAC, it should see the Yam (does here...and the Sony DVD). I have the USB version of the F1...not FW, but it should work just the same.

n68...

USB2 via an add on BUSLink card has been rock solid. USB thru a hub for certain peripherals can be problematic. No hub...no problem. FireWire is almost as common as USB on most newer computers and is very much a standard. Do a google search on Firewire peripherals and watch the hits roll in.

xen-uno