Pioneer A06 - Hardware Requirements, How stringent are they?

[Cataphract]

I just came back from the store where I went to pick up the Pioneer A06, but came back empty handed as was confused about their Hardware requirements which were kind of on the high side for me.

They list system req's as -

Intel® Pentium® III processor 800MHz (1.0GHz best); Windows 98 SE, 2000, ME, XP; Windows Media 6.x or later, Internet Explorer 5.x or later; 128MB RAM (256MB best); ATAPI drive slot; AGP video graphics card with 16MB RAM; 10.0GB hard drive space

My Laptop has
PIII 700 Mhz
512 MB RAM
8 MB Video RAM
12 GB HD + 160 GB Ext HD
Win 2000 Pro

I plan to buy an External Enclosure and convert it to an Ext Writer.
http://www.dealsonic.com/bytidetousb2.html

Another question is that on the retail box it lists the interface as ATAPI and Ultra DMA/33 and the enclosure interface says it is compatible with IDE drives.

Does this matter? Will the A06 work in the enclosure that I ma planning to get? Anyone have any exp with it?

Also please post if you think my system req's will be a problem for this drive, I really need to know soon.

Thanks a lot.

[redwudz]

I don't think you will have any major problems. I'm not a fan of USB2, I prefer firewire, but still should be OK, somewhat depends on your USB2 interface. If you are feeding video from your external drive to the DVD over the USB that may be a problem due to bandwidth but there is really no way to know outside of trying it. ATAPI, EIDE, in your case same thing. I have used a 104 with my laptop and it worked OK. You might look for an enclosure that has firewire and USB, as this will give you more options for the future. I use a cheap firewire cardbus card and it frees up the USB for other purposes. But, if this system is what you have, go for it.

[sctakeshi]

I only have a 600MHz PIII and plan to buy this writer so I sure hope it will work (my laptop is 1.8GHz but obviously I am installing this in my desktop, which is just 600MHz)

I read other system requirements and I though you only needed about 500MHz to use the drive, but if you wanted to burn DVD VIDEO then it would require more like 900MHz. All I am using it for at first is data so I should be okay, right?

[Cataphract]

I don't think you will have any major problems. I'm not a fan of USB2, I prefer firewire, but still should be OK, somewhat depends on your USB2 interface. If you are feeding video from your external drive to the DVD over the USB that may be a problem due to bandwidth but there is really no way to know outside of trying it. ATAPI, EIDE, in your case same thing. I have used a 104 with my laptop and it worked OK. You might look for an enclosure that has firewire and USB, as this will give you more options for the future. I use a cheap firewire cardbus card and it frees up the USB for other purposes. But, if this system is what you have, go for it.

You are right, I will transfer video from my EXt HD to the Ext Burner using USB 2.0 Interface, I have a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card with 2 ports and I am thinking that should take care of the bandwidth. I used to have a Buslink Ext CD-RW burner and regularly burned at 40X with the same configuration. The only diff now will be that I will replace the Buslink Burner with the Pioneer Burner in the Ext Enclosure.

Edit: Forgot to mention, my machine is 2 yrs old and it does not have a firewire port, and since I already bought a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card, I don't want to shell out extra cash on a firewire card.

I am more worried about my system specs, as to whether or not a P3 700 will be up to the task or not?

Does anyone currently use this drive with specs that are less than what is listed in the req's??

[redwudz]

I only have a 600MHz PIII and plan to buy this writer so I sure hope it will work (my laptop is 1.8GHz but obviously I am installing this in my desktop, which is just 600MHz)

I read other system requirements and I though you only needed about 500MHz to use the drive, but if you wanted to burn DVD VIDEO then it would require more like 900MHz. All I am using it for at first is data so I should be okay, right?

Burning DVD's doesn't requre that fast of computer. Encoding is what needs speed and memory. I had a 800MHz Athlon and it would encode just fine, but it took 15 hours encoding time to do what I do in 3 with my present setup. If you get into encoding video, you really need 2+GHZ processor and at least 256MB memory, and preferably a 80GB HD seperate from your boot drive. You can get by with less, but it will be a whole lot slower. I still recommend a firewire card and USB2/Firewire enclosure to maximize your bandwidth use.

[dpalbsp]

I am using Pioneer DVR-A06 internal drive on a PIII 700 512MB Win XP SP1 dell Desktop for about 4 weeks and its working great.

I have burnt 2x DVD-R/RW (TDK & Verbatim) and Compusa 2.4x DVD+R. I use Nero and DVD XCopy. I have yet to try burning a 4x media.

Only thing I do is disable internet, windows update, Anti virus and screen saver during the burn process.

About the external enclosure, I have read in this forum that Pioneer doesn't work well with USB 2.0 enclosures but Firewire works well. So you should consider Firewire enclosure instead of USB.

[Cataphract]

Thanks dpalbsp.

Darn, I really dont want to shell out any more cash for firewire, besides I really like USB 2.0. I have installed a 160 gb HD in a USB 2.0 enc and it works great. I also bought a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card so that my machine can take advantage of that bandwidth.

I am not sure what to do now, may be I will take a chance and see, hopefully it will work out with the A06.

[jamerican]

I just installed a Pioneer 106 in a Coolmax Firewire/USB 2 enclosure and am trying my first burn from an iso file. To my dismay, it is only burning at 0.1X (85 kb/s) using an USB port. I previously had installed on the computer a Sony 500ULX and a Ricoh MP5125A in an ADS FW/USB 2 case using the same USB port and they both burned at the correct speeds (4X for the Sony and 2.4X for the Ricoh). The firmware on the Pioneer is the most current - 1.07 - I believe. I have tried a Ritek 4X -R and an Optodisc 4X +R and am getting the same result. Does anyone have any idea what is happening here? The computer is a Presario 6000 with Win XP Home, AMD Athlon 1.67 GHZ and 736 MB ram. Any help would be appreciated.

[jamerican]

Further to my previous post, I switched from USB 2.0 to Firewire mode and the drive has burned one 4X DVD-R successfully at 4.1X and is now burning a 4X DVD+R at 4.1X. I cannot say if the USB port on the case was bad or if the cable was bad. The port on the computer is fine as I have another drive plugged in to it and it is working fine. I now have to test the recorded discs for read errors to see if they are OK. Guess I'll just have to keep experimenting with this drive to see how good it is. 8)

[Cataphract]

Damn, more bad news. Looks like I have to abandon my plans of hooking up a Pioneer drive in a USB 2 enclosure.

Jamerican, do post your progress if you get it to work with the USB 2 port.

[The other Colin]

I can't help the orignal poster (sorry), as my A06 is internal, but seeing has how at least one person was wondering....

PIII-450 system (see profile for rest). Drives are limited to ATA/33 by motherboard ......

When I first installed my A06 my HD was a 17GB 5400RPM Seagate with four years worth of accumulated crap. Even then, writing at 4x wasn't a problem (Nero measured a potential of 4.5x).

I recently bought a 40GB 7200RPM Seagate and now Nero reckons I have a potential of 9.5x.

Now if only Santa would bring me something with enough grunt to capture and edit.


Colin

[redwudz]

Cataphract: Do yourself a favor and get a box that has both USB2 and Firewire, that way you can't go wrong. Never hurts to have options instead of regrets.

[lechtin]

Most of the requirements posted for burners (like min CPU speed) are based on the application and the software needed for the job. If you buy a DVD burner, it is assumed that you will want to use it in video applications. That is where you need a decent CPU, more memory, and a fast hard drive with enough available space (1 hour of DV video is 13 GB)

Hardware wise, there is no reason the drive itself will not do its basic job of burning, especially with buffer underrun activated. It will just take longer on a slower system (within reason, I'm not going to suggest using a DVD burner on a 486)

To prove my point, I have a Sony DRU500A inside a ADS dual-link external enclosure. I used it to ghost (Norton Ghost 2003) my laptop which is a pentium II 300MHz, 128 MB memory, 6 GB hard disk (only 4200 RPM), and using the laptop's USB 1.1 port. If that's not stretching it, I don't know what is. I did not have any problem, but of course it did not burn at full speed.