(DEAD)CenDyne 24x10x40 $34.99, after $40 rebate & $25 coupon at OfficeMax

[SoLiDus88]

The acer drive is horrible. 700 megs burned at around 5:30 to 6:00 mins. And the computer cant be used during burning as it utilizes a ton of resources.

I can return this to officemax and get a full refund even after i "tested" the drive?

 

[Pogs]

<< pogs , which store is that ? >>



Opps..sorry I forgot to mention which branch....it's the Bloomingdale store here in IL. I was just there an hour ago and did a swap with no hassles. They even apologized for sending me the Acer...go figure! The replacement drive I got is a Lite-On (not a rebadged Verbatim) and they still had a few left over there. So if you live around my area you can still go there and buy one or do a swap.

 

[mattcham]

I can't seem to find the word in the dictionary...

Is ACER pronounced "a-sir" or "ass-er"?

 

[Pogs]

I used to have a few friends who worked for Acer and they always pronounce it "ey-sir". Whether that's the right way I don't know but that's also how I've been hearing it from other ppl.

 

[halk97]

I got the acer also. Tested it with the supplied Nero burning program. I tested with a 24x cdr and the burn took 6:24 for 700megs. I did this twice and both times the seemless link kicked in many times. I am definitely return this drive!!

 

[borr]

I am not sure that I am allowed to do this without getting permission from the author, but I will do it anyway. If someone knows that I am not allowed for any reasons, the AT policies, or else, let me know please.

I would like to ask others who received the acer to verify these problems shared by several in the cendyne support forum. The problems are,
1. unusually high cpu utilization
2. occasional errors with error messages like "SCSI target error," and "no seek complete"
3. not being able to burn at higher than 12x

Here is the quote from jrt1's post to the cendyne support forum.



<< Apparently the 2410a is just like Acer's 20x model (see the Acer 2010a review for details), because it does not support DMA transfers. However some IDE interfaces mishandle this, and enable DMA anyway. I also have found that the drive is completely unusable at writing speeds of over 12x with DMA enabled. The kicker is if you disable DMA and use PIO mode 4, the drive works, but the CPU usage due to the polled I/O is so high, the drive will constantly underrun its buffer. So this drive will never be able to write at anything approaching 24x.

I would love for someone at CenDyne to prove me wrong, but I can't see how the Acer based 24x drive could even be considered a functional piece of hardware. This is apparently a common problem - many of the "SCSI target error" posts elsewhere on this board are likely due to using a Acer drive with DMA enabled.

Background details:
* Windows 2000 SP2.
* Nero 5.5.7.2 (with latest drive patch).
* The drive came loaded with the latest firmware - P.MJ.
* CenDyne drive is on the motherboard's secondary IDE channel, with no other drives sharing the channel. I have tried it in both master and slave configurations, with no difference.
* I am using the stock Windows 2000 IDE controller driver for my motherboard's IDE interface.
* Windows 2000 allows this drive to be run using DMA transfers, but as stated above, it is unusable for writing at >12x with DMA enabled. Even simulated burns fail, indicating that the CD-RW drive is the problem, not a media or hard drive speed problem.
* In PIO mode 4, the drive "works" correctly, except that the CPU usage is 100%, and eventually, the buffer underruns.
* A Promise Ultra 100 TX2 IDE adaptor correctly indicated that this drive only supports a maximum of PIO mode 4 (no DMA transfers). >>




I can't say and am not saying that all acer 24x10 drives have these problems. All I am saying is that I had these, and found others who are having the same troubles at the cendyne support forum. Please share your experience if you received the acer. I need a burner that works reasonably well, it doesn't have to be a lite-on. If enough people share their positive experience with the acer, I would exchange this for another acer (of course i would look for lite-on, teac, or aopen first at the store).

 

[JohnMellencamp]

Darn I was hoping the Acer drives had better feedback I guess if I hadn`t known better I would have been happy with this drive if I had plugged it in but now its going back and my OM dosn`t have any Lite-ons so maybe I should shoot for a A-open drive instead.

 

[SCRacer]

got one today in a B&M store. the store manager approved the use of the online coupon after she confirmed that you couldn't buy it online anymore....YMMV.

BTW it's a Lite-On

Thanks for the post

 

[Lizardman]

I have some comparative benchmarks for the BTC drive and teh acer drive if anyone wants to see them.

By the way every test i ran with cdspeed gave the acer a 10 for DAE quality. It also had 16% CPU usage at 8x compared to teh btc which had 57% at 8x.

 

[cchen]

the acer drive that i received works perfectly fine, burned a 700mb cd for me in a little less than 5 min. to correct the no seek error, enable dma on the drive and everything should be fine.

i have my dma enabled and am able to write at 24x

 

[Lizardman]

dam my computer is not let me enable dma for my acer... This is probably why it always burns in like 6 minutes. Any tech gurus know what to do? I cant select it as an option for under device manager under win2000.

 

[MysticMan1]

Lizardman

I don't know if it's the same win 2000, but to turn on a DWA in win XP go to the device manager, open the IDE controllers right click on the primary or secondary IDE channel then porperties, click on the advanced settings tab, for the tranfer mode choose DMA mode.

 

[borr]

intel ata companion says dma is on, i also tried with promise ultra100, which automatically turns dma on when supported devices are detected. the drive was detected as dma 2. of course, having looked at the cpu utilization, i know it couldn't have possibly been in the dma mode. i remember reading that some w2k systems don't use dma even when the users turn dma on, and the reports say it is on. anyway, my both ide controllers don't even give me the option to turn on or off dma, so i am stuck. my mainboard chipset is i815 (ide controller is intel82801ba). w2k sp2. I applied the intel inf update, and installed the intel ata driver and utility. the driver for promise card is also the latest.

i don't benchmark hd performance, but i can caputure 640x480, 29.97fps, yuy2, non-compressed/huffyuv video without a drop for 3 hours (that is the max that i need, no need to benchmark). that is about 18mb/s (non-compressed) or around 6 Mb/s, and the cpu utilization is between 40-60%. I can't tell for sure the dma mode works fine for hard drives (again, they are supposed to be on), but this level of I/O performance (bandwidth, consistency, cpu usage) is far better than what i get from burning CD's at 24x with the acer (80-100% cpu usage, very frequent buffer under run protection kicking in, and weird errors caused by I/O problems), so whether my system has a problem using the dma mode or not, either the acer drive i got is defective or this drive has a serious compatibility issue with my machine (and some other users' here).

i am not used to posting to online forums. the more i write about this drive, the worse i feel, and maybe i am making the users of acer drives feel really bad. i guess i should stop posting. sorry if i offended anyone.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

very nice post..borr
..don't stop posting as the type of posts that you just posted are kinda lacking around here. Glad I got a Teac on this deal

 

[xDrAGoNx]

<< I can't seem to find the word in the dictionary...

Is ACER pronounced "a-sir" or "ass-er"? >>



was this suppose to be a joke that no one addressed or am i making things up in my head again?

 

[almostmakingit]

Ordered one online, it came delivered from Jersey.. an Acer.
Then I went to Omax and talked the guy into looking for smartburn or at least a twelve digit all number serial..
He had one with a twelve digit serial starting with 265. He went on to tell me (in a condescending tone)how the drives are all the same and I shouldn't worry about the serial.. and that all I was looking for was buffer underun protection of any kind.. I tried to explain to him about the four rebadged drives, but the guy didn't need to learn... He knew everything... So I purchased the 12 digit,
brought it home,....... its a verbatim with a liteon sticker under it. The acer goes back tomorrow.

 

[Steve0]

Well you know, the world's biggest computer geniuses have all taken jobs at OMax. Right?

Steve

 

[almostmakingit]

LOL Steve.. I should have stood in awe of the man that has learned all there is to learn..

 

[JameyF]

I went to three different OM before I found a rebadged Lite-on. Another manager had called ahead to check his stock from the second store I had been. When I picked up the 2 drives and the last store, he came out and asked, "What's with all this serial number stuff?" I explained the situation with the Polaroid drives and the different manufacturers of the Cendyne drives. He seemed very interested, but the sales clerk that was ringing me up was a total waste of a skull (nothin' in there but stale air). I think the manager wanted to know because he was interested in how they ended up advertising the Polaroids falsely. Add to that fact, a customer had just been to two other stores to try to exchange those drives, and I guess he wanted to see what all the hype is in case he received more calls. In order to get two Lite-ons I had to drive quite a bit, but if the rebates pay out, it will definately be worth it.

In case people missed it in one of my previous posts, here is a link to a page I put up giving a brief explanation on what to look for and how to change the verbatim brand Lite-on over to Lite-on firmware.

 

[almostmakingit]

JamieF Thanks for the site..

I have a dumb question...

Is that firmware okay for Win98 or just XP? TIA

 

[cchen]

<< dam my computer is not let me enable dma for my acer... This is probably why it always burns in like 6 minutes. Any tech gurus know what to do? I cant select it as an option for under device manager under win2000. >>



you need to go to the administrative tools -> computer management. you can enable it there.

 

[ss284]

Acer has changed to BenQ, kinda like how japanese people pronounce thank you.


-Steve

 

[ScrapSilicon]

<< JamieF Thanks for the site..

I have a dumb question...

Is that firmware okay for Win98 or just XP? TIA >>

its drive specific not Operating System specific...thanks ss284 heard that Acer had bailed out of the market..BenQ wonder if any relation to TopG or Glory or whatever it is this week

 

[Pogs]

<< Darn I was hoping the Acer drives had better feedback I guess if I hadn`t known better I would have been happy with this drive if I had plugged it in but now its going back and my OM dosn`t have any Lite-ons so maybe I should shoot for a A-open drive instead. >>



Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Acer and AOpen the same company? So whether you get an Acer badged or AOpen badged drive the only difference is the brand name and model number? If you go to their website their products have similar product codings like CRWxxxxx for CD-RW's.

EDIT: Actually, maybe they are different drives. One has "Seamless-Link" and the other "Just-Link". Also, they perform differently after looking at the reviews on both from CDRInfo.com. But I am still sure both companies are related.

Have a good day!

 

[gswpete]

Acer and Aopen are two different companies.