Is the Pioneer 115D a straight swap for my Sony DW-U12A?

[Captain Satellite]

The title pretty much says it all. Is it only a matter of unplugging the Sony and plugging in the Pioneer? I've done video cards, ram, hard drives,etc.

Am I OK? The Sony is still working fine by the way...

[samijubal]

With XP it is. I don't know about other operating systems. I swap my second drive all the time since I use 2 different drives as the second drive and don't have room for a third.

[Captain Satellite]

I am running XP. Thanks!

[ricoman]

No problemo. Go for it. The Pioneer is a great drive, don't think twice about it.

[Captain Satellite]

Thanks, guys. Should I stick with 8x media? I'm in no hurry and have read that 16x can sometimes be troublesome.

[samijubal]

I've had no problems with TY or Verbatim 16x discs. I burn them at 8x.

[budz]

make sure you use a 80 wire ide cable and set the jumper switch to either master or slave.

[Captain Satellite]

budz, Would my six year old Sony PC have the 40 wire?

[ricoman]

I use TY02 (8x media) and 16x +R Verbs and burn them both at 12x. I get 99 QS with less than 200 PIF regularly with these. My last burn (Gone Baby Gone) with the Verbs was 99 with 95 PIF. You really can't get better than that. The 115d is the best burner that I have ever used, and I have a BenQ 1640, LG 4167 and NEC 3500. All legendary burners in their day.

[budz]

budz, Would my six year old Sony PC have the 40 wire?

That's quite possible. Newer dvd burners especially the Pioneer drives recommend using a 80 wire ide cable which is inexpensive. You can get one from any local computer store. Preferably get a flat 80 wire ide cable for your new Pioneer 115D. If you use a 40 wire ide cable on the drive it will not work correctly. Some have experienced their computers freezing up and having to do a hard reboot. I had the same problem when I bought my Pioneer 111 drives but once I used a flat 80 wire ide cable the drive was recognized correctly and no other pc problems.

[oldandinthe way]

Your 6 year old SONY would defintiely have a 40 wire cable. Listen to Budz, buy a cable.

[Captain Satellite]

I really appreciate you guys taking the time out to give your advice.

I usually buy TY02 so I'll stick with that. I'll definitely buy the 80 wire cable - thanks!

[[_chef_]]

make sure you use a 80 wire ide cable and set the jumper switch to either master or slave.

Yup, that counts first.
Once installed and Running in UDMA4 mode, you can start flashing/patching.

[Captain Satellite]

Thanks to everybody for the advice, I made the swap and only wish I had done it sooner.

chef, What is 'UDMA4 mode'? The burner is up and running fine, do I need to set something else? Thanks!

[budz]

Thanks to everybody for the advice, I made the swap and only wish I had done it sooner.

chef, What is 'UDMA4 mode'? The burner is up and running fine, do I need to set something else? Thanks!

go to device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers look for the IDE CHANNEL that your 115D drive is attached to.
then right click on that IDE CHANNEL & click on PROPERTIES. click on the ADVANCE SETTINGS tab, you'll see TRANSFER MODE UDMA 4 would be the 115D and UDMA 5 would be hard drives.

[Captain Satellite]

Thanks for the reply, budz - got it!