Slashdot Mirror
Hot-Rod Your CD-RW Drive
Anonymous Coward writes: "Currently almost everyone with a computer has a CD-ROM drive and also a big part of them have a CD-RW drive. But what if you want to spend less time on writing a CD-R ? You have to buy a new one, or, if you are a real geek, you just overclock it! Seems to be to good to be true ? It's not! Currently a lot of cheap manufacturers of CD-RW drives are using the same parts in their 32x,40x, and 48x drives and start to sell them at 32x, later to 40x and in end as 48x. and with a little upgrading of the firmware (totally legal) you will have a faster drive, because you remove its limits! It currently works on drives from Lite-On (who also makes drives for Memorex, TDK, Iomega, Cendyne, TraxData and Pacific digital all overclockable) And the list goes on as there are also overclock tricks for LG (32x -> 40x) and Sony drives (32x -> 48x). If you don't believe it, read all the reactions and the postings on the forums mentioned above!"
another source of info
. asp?ArticleHeadline=Overclocking&Series=0
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific
with mods for -
AOPEN
HP
Iomega
LG
Lite-On
Plextor
Ricoh
Sony
TraxData
- HeXa
The difference between burning at 40 to 48 speeds is about 20 seconds. Some of us still have to use crappy 4 speed burners. Also a lot of CD media isn't even compatable at those speeds anyway.
You paid $80 to save about 20 seconds recording a cd? Is your time really worth $14,400/hr?
From what I read all you can do is rename/upgrade firmware on rebadged Plextor drives. (they don't seem to play the underclocking game much)
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
1x - 1 hr 10 mins (total, yes I have had one)
2x - 40 mins (actually something like 38)
4x - 19-20 mins
12x - 7 mins
24x - 5 mins
32x - 4:30 mins
40x - ? (haven't upgraded my drive yet
My point being that as things are right now, IDE hard drives are not quite fast enough even with an 8MB buffer to keep up with the data transfer required (and yes, I am running my 7200 Maxtor 27GB as Primary master, and LG 32X CD-RW as Secondary Master on an Intel 815EEA2 board)
How does overclocking (and possibly destroying the drive mechanism, though rare) really help me burn CD faster? Current software / hardware configs give me no better than 4:30 mins .. (while the 24x gives ~5:20)
I think this is something like the 52x and 60x and 72x CDROM, where the number behind the X stands for MAX ... meaning that with optimal (ideal?) parameters, the drive gives 72x (1x = 150kbps)
I'd much rather stick with my * unmodified * 32x drive, thanks.
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
clickety-click
Actually the old mainframe upgrades for processing speed was simply re-writing the microcode core. Took about 4 mins to put it on the programmer and upload the new core. DEC did the same tactics till about a year before they were bought out. The same is true with CPU Mhz variance till the pentium 3 came out. My P2 300 and 333 are identical hardware wise, the only difference is the microcode (Do not confuse with Machine Code!)
Or, better yet, cutting an additional notch in your 5.25" floppys, so they could be read, upside down, in single sided drives? Ah, my old Apple 2 days.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Most high-speed drives seem to not take into account the stresses placed upon CDs. A 56x drive imposes a HUGE amount of momentum on the disc. This is something to be of concern about. Even more so, when you consider the amount of HEAT being generated. Not only by the laser, but by the drive's motor itself.
The situation is worsened when you consider the write-laser, which imparts much more heat onto the disc than the read-laser. Be very aware of this! The faster the drive, the more heat and stress being put onto the disk. Bad Things Can Happen.
I had the displeasure of having a disc EXPLODE in my CD-ROM drive last week, because of heat and stress placed upon it. I'm lucky I didn't have the thing at neck-level since pieces of disk flew across the room.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
I suppose this will have to do with the media properties rather than the drive.
It has to do with how well the drive burns the media. To oversimplify, how do you know that the 32X drive has adequate power at the laser when overclocked to 48X?
It would be a simple matter to check the md5sums. dd if=/dev/cdrom | md5sum -
That doesn't show error rates. That shows if there were one or more unrecoverable errors. If you get a CD with a lot of raw errors that are recovered, the CD will be much less tolerant of damage, degradation, etc., before it develops unreverable errors. It's also less likely to work as reliably when you read it in multiple drives.