I am installing a Pacific Digital Mach 16 DVD RW model 30291 into my Gateway Athlon 750 MHZ, running Win98SE (256ram, 2hdd,20g and 200g.). I currently have a DVD ROM and CD RW. Which one should I remove to make room for the DVD RW? Also, it looks like an audio cable is connected to the DVD ROM and the sound card. Is that going to be necessary for the new set up? Pac. Dig., sent me some new software (NERO) and some drivers to make the drive work on my Win98 machine. They have been great, but I have not heard back on this question yet. Any help GREATLY APPRECIATED!! AR
Hi artmanr, welcome to aD, I would suggest to lose the CD-r writer. A DVD Rom was made for reading and does a far better job of it than does a DVD burner. Using a DVD ROM for reading will add years of life to your new burner HINT: Set your new burner as Master on your secondary IDE cable. Judging by the sounds of it, your PC is a couple of years old, if so, it probably has a 40-pin (wire) IDE cable. You'll want to upgrade that to an 80-pin (wire) IDE cable for faster transfer speed and a big reduction of errors, well worth the $10.00(USD) investment. Happy burning, Pete For starters, checkout my sig for several good guides on backing up DVD's. Most use FREE apps which will give you a quality copy.
It should be ~ If it is a round IDE cable then by all means it is an 80-wire cable. If it is a flat cable, count the wires Good luck and happy burning, Pete
Got it. One last question...Will I need the audio cable that currently connects the DVD ROM with the sound card? Thanks. AR
If you are changing drives ? I would say no. If you are keeping that drive then yes, you'll still require it. Burn on,
Just curious, you mentioned 20 and 200GB hard drives with a 98SE OS. Are you getting the full usage of the 200GB drive? There is a 137GB limit unless your system supports 48 bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA). It takes a controller card with many 98SE systems to get full capacity access to drives larger than 137GB. (Not an issue with XP and NTFS.) Since most DVDs are from 6 to 8GB, it takes a lot of space if you're going to be storing any ripped movie files on the HDD. You're at the very bottom of the spectrum for the amount of RAM necessary. You need to up that to at least 512MB or better. RAM is not very high priced now, so it is a good performance option. The processor is slow. So don't be surprised when recording times are long. DVD recording is a processor intensive task and the faster processors have the advantage. DVD recording came with the newer operating systems following 98, and on higher capacity systems. That should clue you in on the fact that DVD burners weren't really intended for older systems, though on many they work okay, just slower. You may want to consider using DVD Shrink. It was written for use with older systems. AnyDVD and DVD Decrypter solve the obsolete decryption software for the program. You need to read up on this one. I hear Pete is good at getting Newbies started with this one.
I goofed. IT is a 120gig hd. I have yet to burn anything! All I really want to do is burn discs of my home movies from a SONY digital camcorder. I have a Sony TRV740 Digital 8. That's probabalyt another forum. AR
Just to add on what Pete said, if you set your burner to secondary master, make sure your ROM drive isn't set to the same. That could cause some confusion.
