Which DVD writer is backward compatible with PII PC

[come_mon]

Hi,

I've 2 PII PC w/ P2L97 motherboard, Maxtor HD (Maxtor DiamondMAX VL40 & model 91080D5 HD in each respectively) & XP Home installed. I used them to download books & movie files from internet. I want to burn the downloaded files to DVD immediately after the download so I intend to install DVD-writer drive in these PCs (now I use CD-RW drive).

Below are some DVD models I found :

BenQ DW1625
LG GSA-4163B
LITEON 1673S, 1653S, 1633S
AOpen DUW1616L
ASUS E616A (no comments found here)
Artec VOM-12E48X

From the comments here, it seems the LG model is better for my purpose since it can write various kinds of DVD including those cheap ones. However, I'm quite concern that if all of these are compatible with my PC H/W & OS configuration because many of them requires PIII CPU.

Can somebody suggest if these models can be used with my PC ?

PS: I've one Althon 1700+ PC too but I don't PREFER to use it for burning DVD purpose because this is my main working PC.

[xzarkad]

Hi,

I would doubt if a PII pc and a DVD burner would be a good combination. A PII probably supports pio mode 2, and that could be fast enough for burning a cd, but probably too slow to burn a DVD. If you still decide to burn with the PII pc, and you experience a buffer underrun, then you could try to burn with 1 speed...

[Snakebyte1]

You could add a USB 2.0 or Firewire card (or better yet a USB/Firewire combo card) and then connect the DVD burner to an external enclosure.

The cards and the enclosure are not that expensive these days.

If you have a reasonable amount of RAM, kill any running process you don't need and not try to burn at high speed , I think you should be able to do it.

[ROF]

I have a p2-350mhz which is supposedly too slow to burn DVDs, but it does so just fine albeit a little slow because of the Pio mode it is stuck in. I usually burn to it across the network when I want to burn files from a network hard drive without tying up my other PCs. It's a good little machine, but slow. I keep it up and running for watching DVDs, burning, playing music, playing older games, and the TV/FM Tuner.

I've tried an NEC35400a, a Pioneer 110, and a Plextor 740 burners in this machine. All work fine but at a slower pace. It's great to see someone else is thinking about doing the same thing. The P2 is an excellent processor for everyday tasks it just does them much slower then their modern day relatives.

[lordsmurf]

I tried this before, doesn't work well. The P2 would mostly lock up and barf out coasters.

[ROF]

Nah! It burns just fine at 4x. I never tried any higher because of that reason. Burns video and data DVDs just fine. I was also told that machine would not play DVD movies either but even with an 8MB ATI AIW it plays them just fine. Better than my first set top player.

[hhhhbk]

wouldnt bother putting a dvdrw in a pentium 2

if the pcs are online then you are probably networked to them with your main pc

just copy stuff over and burn it using the athlon 1700
burning a dvd at 4x / 8x / 16x takes a bit a processing power and ram
plus if burning dvds you want to burn using the most compatible drive which does the best burns rather than a drive just because it will work on an old pc

[INFRATOM]

if you want to buy a dvd writer, you might as well put a new computer together with a few box more put a cheap computer , can do with $250
MB=$50~60, CPU < $100 , RAM $50 , Box = $25 HD=$40 something like that is possible. modem or NIC can take from P2 if pci.

[ozymango]

if you want to buy a dvd writer, you might as well put a new computer together with a few box more put a cheap computer , can do with $250
MB=$50~60, CPU < $100 , RAM $50 , Box = $25 HD=$40 something like that is possible. modem or NIC can take from P2 if pci.

And if you're really, really, really cheap -- like me! -- you could even just swap out a P3 CPU depending on the motherboard, probably find a P3-600 or faster on eBay for a few bucks. Or check thrift stores and/or Goodwill and/or if there's anyplace in town that recycles computers.

I've done some video work on a P2-400 and while you can make it run (barely!), boy it's painfully slow and the cost savings, such as they are, just isn't worth the pain and suffering.

[come_mon]

wouldnt bother putting a dvdrw in a pentium 2

if the pcs are online then you are probably networked to them with your main pc

just copy stuff over and burn it using the athlon 1700
burning a dvd at 4x / 8x / 16x takes a bit a processing power and ram
plus if burning dvds you want to burn using the most compatible drive which does the best burns rather than a drive just because it will work on an old pc

But I found network file transfer didn't go smooth. Those PCs could see each other but I couldn't transfer files between them by sharing directories (even those XP default shared folders). This was not LAN cable, NIC or hub issue but probably XP setting issues (Unfortunately I haven't solved that yet).

So I prefer to burn the downloaded files from the PCs directly connected to internet.

[come_mon]

if you want to buy a dvd writer, you might as well put a new computer together with a few box more put a cheap computer , can do with $250
MB=$50~60, CPU < $100 , RAM $50 , Box = $25 HD=$40 something like that is possible. modem or NIC can take from P2 if pci.

And if you're really, really, really cheap -- like me! -- you could even just swap out a P3 CPU depending on the motherboard, probably find a P3-600 or faster on eBay for a few bucks. Or check thrift stores and/or Goodwill and/or if there's anyplace in town that recycles computers.

I've done some video work on a P2-400 and while you can make it run (barely!), boy it's painfully slow and the cost savings, such as they are, just isn't worth the pain and suffering.

I wouldn't do video processing / editing at that P2 PCs. I just used them to download files. Now I burnt it directly on CD after download. Would it be OK for that purpose only ?

[INFRATOM]

many things are do'able but not practical or cost effective. P2 by todays standard does not meet the min requirement for most systems. Downloading involves CPU, RAM and HD speed so an old computer with cost you time. if you are patient and it doesn't bother you go ahead. You can even take out dvd drive from other computer install it on this then burn. Or as someone mentioned if you are networked download copy to another network computer and burn. Imagine how long it will take for all those GB's to travel !! through your system. Time spent + coasters < cheap p4 or celeron (AMD).

[rumplestiltskin]

(sorry; couldn't resist.)

[come_mon]

many things are do'able but not practical or cost effective. P2 by todays standard does not meet the min requirement for most systems. Downloading involves CPU, RAM and HD speed so an old computer with cost you time. if you are patient and it doesn't bother you go ahead. You can even take out dvd drive from other computer install it on this then burn. Or as someone mentioned if you are networked download copy to another network computer and burn. Imagine how long it will take for all those GB's to travel !! through your system. Time spent + coasters < cheap p4 or celeron (AMD).

Actuall P3 are also obsolete and as you say, can't meet the requirement of most systems soon.

For my case of downloading, the most costing factor is time because the speed of downloading from info source to my PC (no matter it's P2 or P4 or above) never exceed 50KBps (Kbyte/sec) from my observation. I have to be patient even if I don't want so (example, I'm downloading a 699MB .avi file since Nov 3 but till now, Nov 12 I only get 500MB).

My point is, so long as DVD burning in P2 can go to an end successfully without unrecoverable error, I can tolerate (even if it takes 10-20 minutes to burn one). I have no loss in time because these P2s will not serve other purpose for me now and I think the electrical charge incurred by turning on a P2 for 24 hours is practically no difference than a P3 or P4 PC (correct me if I'm wrong).

If I'll consider buy a new PC, I will consider P4 above (I won't even consider P3 because it will be obsolete faster than P4).

Also, I'm looking for installing a router now such that I can have more than one PC connecting to internet simultanously. Then, my 'snail' speed P2 won't hinder other DVD related activities because I can do that on my faster PC (of course I need to upgrade my DVD drive there).

Thanks for your advice My post here is just to confirm whether burning DVD with above mentioned DVD Rewriteable drives is impossible (e.g. incredible slow) with P2 PC. I don't mean to keep my P2 forever. I will throw them to trash when they no longer function.

[come_mon]

many things are do'able but not practical or cost effective. P2 by todays standard does not meet the min requirement for most systems. Downloading involves CPU, RAM and HD speed so an old computer with cost you time. if you are patient and it doesn't bother you go ahead. You can even take out dvd drive from other computer install it on this then burn. Or as someone mentioned if you are networked download copy to another network computer and burn. Imagine how long it will take for all those GB's to travel !! through your system. Time spent + coasters < cheap p4 or celeron (AMD).

After one day long study of testing reports at

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Home.aspx?ArticleTypeId=2&Sub...

about LG 4167B, Pioneer DVR-110 & DVR-110D, Plextor PX-716AL (from my
layman's view), I decided & did bought one LG 4167B (non box set) at
$41.7 (equivalent USD) from shop. LG was choosed because I got the
impression from the test report that this model performed stably in
writing various media & can read wide range of media even if they were
copyright protected. I will use this DVD drive mainly for burning DVD.
So I don't mind it's slightly inferior performance in reading test.

Also, this H/W was installed at my Althon PC rather than previously mentioned PII PC after I solved its LAN connection problem with my Althon PC (at least up to this moment).

Because I will not (and have no spare time too) buy all the DVD media
claimed supported by this model, I need some tools that can help me to
test the drive's function thoroughly. I hope the test will help me find
out if the bought drive function as it should be.

CDSpeed2000, DVDInfopro & KProbe2 were downloaded from below links:

http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=download.html
http://www.dvd-recordable.org/wwwimgs/media/flash/dvdinfopro/index.htm
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=93944

Are these software suitable test suites ? Any other testing tools needed ?

[Super Warrior]

A pentium II? yikes! Time to get rid of the dinosuar and upgrade!

Cheap but NICE Entry-level comps these days with 2.0+Ghz Celerons are WAAAAAAAY faster.

[greymalkin]

tigerdirect.com has a barebones bundle right now with a case/power supply, celeronD 2.93ghz, 512mb DDR ram, and a motherboard with onboard video/audio. All you need is a hard drive and the dvd-burner.

after rebates it is about 150.

[ROF]

@greymalkin

if that's the MSI bundle I'd avoid it. Two bad boards, one bad power supply, and two returned chips from three different attempts to build with that one. I'd recommend against getting it if it's the one I'm thinking you are talking about.

[greymalkin]

thanks for the heads up!