minimum system specs for DVD burner?

[lordsmurf]

What's the slowest system you've put a DVD burner into?

I'm thinking about adding one to my sloth, a P1/166 with 64MB that runs both Linux and Windows 98. It would be nice for DVD5 backups and copying things disc-to-disc at 2x speed.

What do you think? Possible? Or recipe for disaster?

[disturbed1]

I've used a PII233 (or was it 266?) to do disc 2 disc at 2x with an A03 and Pioneer 116 DVD Rom.

Ran Windows2KPro 64MBRam, and ATA 33.

I know both a Pentium Pro 200, and Pentium 200mmx can burn 2x from the HD with ATA 33, never tried disc 2 disc with those 2 machines.

[lordsmurf]

Well, I pulled a bunch of junk out of my computer junk box in the attic, and managed to build an AMD-K6 200mhz, 128 PC100 SDRAM, 8GB HD, a cheap DVD-ROM, and a new Emprex (BTC1004IM) burner from Fry's for $60.

Total cost for new system: $60 plus tax.

It works great.

However, that would not have been possible without disturbed1's indirect advice. The ATA33 (could it have been less?) on the system would send the burn buffer to shit, and then overrun the underrun for a failed burn. Thinking over what disturbed1 said, I put in my extra Promise TX2 UltraATA controller I had laying around from a hard drive purchase. Put both DVD-ROM and DVD-R drive on the Promise. I also put a ATA100 HD on the DVD-ROM channel. I can now burn 2x perfectly from disc-to-disc, and 4x from drive to disc using the UltraATA inside the system.

Problems: burned out one power supply in the process, but I had 4 more to platy with in my box. Using 235W one, hope it holds out. The one that burned out was 11 years old, 230W, probably saw action for at least 6-7 of them non-stop.

So forget that minimum spec junk on the box. You can do it with a sloth, just like me.

[disturbed1]

If you need some parts to build another cheap PC I usually use www.compgeeks.com and www.matrixsurplus.com .

Matrix Surplus has a good selection of socket 370 MBs, and a few other slot/socket types. Mainly Asus new/refurbs. I just got 3 ASUS CUBX boards (4 IDE Channels).

Also check out www.soyo.com. They sell new and refurb mobos. I got a dual slot 1 board for $30 that supports upto dual 1GHZ cpus and has onboard SCSI.

www.surpluscomputers.com 4 pack 47gig SCSI drives $52, but they kill you on the shipping.

I know what you mean about a computer junk box. My girlfriend always tells me to use it or lose it. Every chance I get I'm putting together old PCs. I even built a 486dx100 with Win 3.1/Calmira. She only wanted Email and a web browser works just fine, plus it was basically free.

Glad to see you got it to work

[spectroelectro]

P3 450 with 8 gig OS drive and 8 gig blank dirve, Pioneer 104 burner, 128 megs RAM DIMM, Win 98SE. Amazingly, it works like a charm. No coasters yet. (My main system is a p4 2.4 with 512 megs and a 60 gig + 200 gig, so the second machine is just for burning DVDs, never encoding 'em. Yet it works.)

[babyboo]

P3 600Mhz W98SE 356MB Ram 460Gigs Slow as molases but gets the job done with a Lite-On 811S. I Just priced out some parts as I plan to build a new rig within the next month or two...I have 3 old laptops...2 P1s and a 180Cyrix although I doubt that I would be able to get a burner to work with them.

[VinnySem]

If you need some parts to build another cheap PC I usually use www.compgeeks.com and www.matrixsurplus.com .

Matrix Surplus has a good selection of socket 370 MBs, and a few other slot/socket types. Mainly Asus new/refurbs. I just got 3 ASUS CUBX boards (4 IDE Channels).

Also check out www.soyo.com. They sell new and refurb mobos. I got a dual slot 1 board for $30 that supports upto dual 1GHZ cpus and has onboard SCSI.

www.surpluscomputers.com 4 pack 47gig SCSI drives $52, but they kill you on the shipping.

I know what you mean about a computer junk box. My girlfriend always tells me to use it or lose it. Every chance I get I'm putting together old PCs. I even built a 486dx100 with Win 3.1/Calmira. She only wanted Email and a web browser works just fine, plus it was basically free.

Glad to see you got it to work

Holy hell did you see the size of those 47 gig drives?

[disturbed1]

Huge indeed. I've got 4 of them I put them in a severly modified case with two AT power supplies. It sits next to a normal ATX case with the dual MB in it.

A Dremel tool can fix anything

[babyboo]

7 pounds each!

[VinnySem]

Huge indeed. I've got 4 of them I put them in a severly modified case with two AT power supplies. It sits next to a normal ATX case with the dual MB in it.

A Dremel tool can fix anything

Nice, a homemade drive tower! Does it sound like a Pratt Whitney when it starts up?

[disturbed1]

WHAT!!

2 Panoflow 120mm fans in it too. Thought I'd have to bolt the case down to keep it from taking off

It is rather loud though. I have a Vantec Tornado CPU cooler on one of my AMDs, it's rather quite compared to the drive tower.

Those SCSI drives are fast for what they are. The system only runs newsplex on 2 drives, and is a mp3/video server on the other 2 drives, then pipes the feeds out of bridged NICs to my LAN.

[susie]

What's the slowest system you've put a DVD burner into?

I'm thinking about adding one to my sloth, a P1/166 with 64MB that runs both Linux and Windows 98. It would be nice for DVD5 backups and copying things disc-to-disc at 2x speed.

What do you think? Possible? Or recipe for disaster?

P1/166 is good enough to run a DVD burner according to this software requirement :

DVD Clone Factory
http://www.dvdclone.us

System Requirements:

Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP system
Pentium 166Mhz, equivalent processor or better
128 MB RAM
1 GB hard disk space
DVD burner