Which dual burner to buy; Pioneer, NEC or Plextor?

[goat]

I'm going to buy a dual layer burner and have not figured out which to buy. It seems like NewEgg has the best deals right now on all three:
Pioneer 109
NEC 3520
Plextor 716

Is it worth the extra money for the Plextor? 8mb buffer
All the others seem to have 2mb buffer.
The NEC is the same burner the Lacie uses in their external boxes wich have great ratings.
Or just stick with Pioneer.
Thanks for the imput in advance.

[Sifaga]

you got your list in my order of choice

[steve2713]

NEC

[goat]

Are there any flashes to make the NEC region free?

[AlbcAlbrr]

I had a Pioneer 105 & NEC 2510. The NEC never failed during burning, but would fail on reads. The disks that failed would always read in the 105. So I sold the NEC and bought a Pioneer 108. Both Pioneers have been flawless.

Lacie buys hardware from many sources and then burns their roms into them or uses their own firmware. They may be using NEC right now, but have used Pioneer in the recent past.

[miksu]

Go for NEC. Plenty of RPC-1 & other haxed (rip-lock removed etc.) firmware. Flashed my 2500 to do DL. GUI flasher exists for OSX (Pioneer doesn't have it?).

[JoachimS]

Mac Pioneer flasher that works up to the 108 model can be downloaded from here (109 FlashKit being prepared I assume):

http://flashman.rpc1.org/Firmware/PIONEER/

Use a PC to flash a 109 with ver. 1.40.

Cheers,

Joachim

[goat]

It looks like I'm going to get the Pioneer 109 from Newegg ... pretty good deal.
Can I use VPC to flash the Pioneer Drive? Or only with a PC
Either way what are the steps in flashing the 109 .... if you could walk me through it so I do not mess up the drive.
(I flashed my Pioneer 105 on my Mac .... one step ... very easy) I have read some of the steps on a Google search, to flash it but it seems like you have to do multiple things ... I may be wrong.
Thanks !

[JoachimS]

Flashing is easy:

- Find a PC with available IDE cable
- Make sure no slave drive is connected on the same bus, the 109 must be the only drive on the bus, jumpers set to master
- Download the flasher from the Pioneer site
- Start the exe file
- You're done


Put into your Mac. Jumpers still master.

Exception: If you have a mirrored door Mac, put it into the upper drive bay, jumpers set to cable select.

Get Patchburn and install it.

Cheers,

Joachim

PS: Alternatively, pay a little more at your local PC store, and they'll do the flashing for you.

[willrob]

You can also use an external USB case and VPC from your Mac. Currently, even on the PC side, there isn't a Region Free firmware for the 109; but if you are using a PC, you can switch the drive from a 109 to an A09, which will unlock the ripping speed (12X).

A good place for info:

http://forum.rpc1.org/viewforum.php?f=2

william

[JoachimS]

@willrob:

I tried to do it, but I the drive was not recognized. Either WIN 2000 (pretty old I know) or VPC is the reason for that.

The USB bridge type is an Oxford 922 which I borrowed from my external HD.

The drive was recognized by Mac OS X however.

The Ratoc USB2 card could also be an issue.

So I went to a PC friend....

Cheers,

Joachim

[decay]

Patchburn (ought to be a hotlinked app here)

http://www.patchburn.de/download.html

dk

[miksu]

NEC drives can be flashed with Mac, easily. No need to use PC or VPC. IMHO that's big advantage, worth more than few dead presidents.

Flasher (Binflash) for Nec and some TDK and Mad Dog drives can be downloaded (+GUI) from
http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/

With Pioneer, you are married with PC for firmware updates.
And you may really need to make 'em, as new medias with new media codes are introduced.

And Nec/TDK/Mad Dog firmware (original+haxed) from
http://www.micheldeboer.nl/firmware/

[goat]

miksu:
Do you have an NEC? If so how do you like it? The price at Newegg for the Pioneer just went up. So I'm debating if I should get it now. The NEC is cheaper with free shipping too.

???? What to do

[miksu]

miksu:
Do you have an NEC? If so how do you like it? The price at Newegg for the Pioneer just went up. So I'm debating if I should get it now. The NEC is cheaper with free shipping too.

???? What to do

I have ND-2500A. No problems, no coasters. It has excellent burn quality reads everything I throw in.

If Nec is also cheaper, I would buy it.

[goat]

I ended up buying the Pioneer A09 from Amazon.com
The cost was $110 (free shipping and no tax) minus a $30 mail-in rebate = $80
I thought this was the best deal .... keeping the drive under warranty (if you get the 109 and convert it to a A09 will void the warranty). It was only a few bucks more that the NewEgg.com 109 shipped with tax.
I have updated the firmware to 1.40 with VPC. That was pretty easy.

The burning speed is KILLER!!! With Ridata 8X discs durning at 12X.... WOW. I backed-up one of my daughters DVDs (3.8 G), it took 3 mins.

I just ordered some 16x discs from Supermediastore.com
I wonder how fast they will burn !!!

[BigF0ot]

Hi, Could you provide the details on how you changed the firmware to make the drive region-free?

Thanks,
DS

[willrob]

Hi, Could you provide the details on how you changed the firmware to make the drive region-free?

I'm not sure who you're asking the above question to. The Pioneer 109 currently has no region free flasher, not even on a PC. For the Mac there is no firmware flasher yet either.

[goat]

I used Virtual PC and an external box (with USB connection). Download the firmware from Pioneer. I bought the A09 ... if you have the 109 you will need to convert it to the A09 to unlock the ripping speed first. Look at this site http://forum.rpc1.org/viewforum.php?f=30&topicdays=0&start=90
If you want the drive to work with the i apps then you will have to install patchburn.

Just a note, I have not been able to get the drive to burn at the rated 16x.

[goat]

I called Pioneer again and spoke with one of the tech guys about the A09 slow speed during burning and he said its because it was not designed for Macs. So anybody interested in a new drive I would recommend one with Apple support !!!

[miksu]

I have one brand to recommend, since it works perfectly with Mac, no speed issues and easy to firmware-upgrade (no need to do PC or VPC). NEC. It's also officially supported in Tiger

[Artful Dodger]

Hi, I have an iBook and use an external LaCie FW drive and it has the NEC 3500 in it and I've been able to do all that I want with it. i made a backup of Troy and for time and speed sake I used a second timer and it goes:
5:23 for a burn and to ver. at the end-my timer said the same as Toast 6 Ti. (yes latest ver.) also based on this I would say I got 16x burning from the dvd. I made backups of a few others and got similar results. I hope this can help

[goat]

I bought the Plextor 716A from BestBuy to try it out (30 day return policy). It actually is slower than the Pioneer A09 ... burning ( with 8x & 16x discs) and ripping !!! I tried it internally and in an external FW box. Also the Pioneer is able to burn Ritek 8x discs at 12x were the Plextor only recognized it at 8x.

I'm going to return it and maybe try the NEC 3520 out.

[egb]

VPC uses a 'hardware abstraction layer' so that the 'PC' never actually connects to the drive - just an emulator of a generic drive. So I *believe* no hardware-specific software will work...

NOTE: I see downthread where VPC works with an external on USB (on Firewire as well?). My experience is only with the internal (ATA) model.

@willrob:

I tried to do it, but I the drive was not recognized. Either WIN 2000 (pretty old I know) or VPC is the reason for that.

The USB bridge type is an Oxford 922 which I borrowed from my external HD.

The drive was recognized by Mac OS X however.

The Ratoc USB2 card could also be an issue.

So I went to a PC friend....

Cheers,

Joachim