Seems HOT to me, Yamaha 8X/4X/24X for $105 shipped!

[sirsolo]

namlook,

that list was just based on my experience, and I had nothing but positive experience with buy.com.
The reason I placed staples.com second (and I did say that it sucks) was to tell you how much more amazon.com sucks.

 

[yellowperil]

This question sounds stupid, but is it OK to activate DMA for this drive? I was told for most CD-RW's, if the system properties doesn't have the DMA box checked by default, it's probably not a good idea to check it. Anyways, I did anyway, and the box is still checked at startup. No mention of this in the drive manual; checking Yamaha's website turned up nothing. Drive still burns fine (actually the buffer level improved), but I'm just wondering.

 

[Bekker]

I purchased and installed the drive and like it so far, but from my experience, you have to disable the DMA, and the manual does say so (but not easy to find). When first installed, mine crapped out and froze everything several times before I decided to read the manual. I found a statement that the DMA needs to be disabled, and did so. That fixed everything. Worked great afterwards. If you want the page number from the manual, let me know. Daniel

 

[NoFish4U]

Bekker,

That is EXACTLY what happened to me.
Computer has been wierd since new video card and I was psyched to burn at 8X. It took 5 aborted burns to find the damn DMA issue.
I was ready to stomp through the side of my case!!

All is well now though.

 

[Bekker]

I know where you're coming from, nofish_4u :Q isgust I was ready to ship it back to Amazon with a foulmouthed message. A bummer since I too was reaally looking forward to an 8X burn.

I am still not too happy about one little item they did not mentionin the description, thaat being that the drive might require a Pentium 333 to work as fast as it is designed to run. Since I put it in a 300 K6-2, I was worried. Still think that needs to be disclosed. But on the other hand, I did not expect the free CD stamper(? if that's what its called). I was just about to buy one from Wally World, so it came at a very good time.

 

[WageSlave]

Well, my UDMA is enabled, and it works great. love the drive.

 

[cmv]

I think they put the "disable UDMA" statement in these manuals because it is easier to support. In reality some machines will work just fine with the CD-R/RW drives in UDMA mode and some will not funciont (lock ups). So the manual says disable it because then they don't have to worry about it anymore...

If it works, great, if not, disable!

 

[Bekker]

I'm not that computer literate, but I don't think they referred to UDMA. If I remember that term right, it is related to the hard drive. The DMA they reference is for Direct Memory Access. If the two are the same, please let me know. If not, maybe the reason the dives work well even if this feature is not disabled is because you might not have it enabled in the first place. If I sound dumb, its because I am. Daniel

 

[skriefal]

I have DMA enabled on my current CD-RW drive (a Ricoh 7040a 4x4x24), and have not encountered any problems. This is under Windows 2000 with a motherboard utilizing the Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset.

The success or non-success will, I believe, depend upon chipset, proper drivers, etc.

I hope to keep DMA *on* when I replace the Ricoh with the Yamaha drive!

 

[Bekker]

From my experience, the drive writes quite fast even with the DMA disabled. I was using a HP 2X2X6 and trying to use it like a normal floppy. It worked well, but not like this one. It seems this one writes about as fast as when saving to a hard drive. Great so far!

 

[ride525]

All of buy.com's coupons seem to be for new customers......and they won't work for me, even with my three credit cards.

 

[youseelabruin]

yeah. on my w2k box, the "transfer mode" is "dma if available" and the "current transfer mode" is "dma mode". works just great!

has anybody been able to flash thier drive? i have (according to nero 5) 1.0g. there is a 1.0j firmware out but i cant flash. i think that the firmware revision isnt necessary, but wonder why i cant flash it. anybody else?

 

[yellowperil]

Haven't tried flashing it. Looked up the firmware updates at Yamaha and the only difference between the j and the g version is simply to sync the version # with the SCSI version. That seemed just plain goofy to me. However, if there is a real update in the future, and I can't flash the drive, I'll probably be pissed.

Can anyone tell me the page # of the manual where it says to disable DMA? I read the thing cover-to-cover carefully (no small task for me since I usually glance over stuff) and I still can't find it mentioned. Is drive performance theoretically improved by checking DMA? When I had a PlexWriter 8432 I remember the manual (much more lucidly written than the Yamaha's) stating DMA should be activated to burn at 8x.

 

[youseelabruin]

p. 22
7.4.1) disabling...

 

[soho]

is this still available????

 

[cmv]

nope. But there is a hot deal in the morning at compusa or something for a 8x4x24 (?) for $99.99. Scan the list.

 

[ride525]

Circuit City is the place with the $99.99 IO Magic 8x drive....

Circuit City IO Magic 8x CD-RW