16x DVD burning - ATA 33 vs. 66

Just make sure to get an "80 wire" flat IDE cable, the longest you can get. This will work with the ATA66 bus and support the 16x writing speed. To get my MDD case to shut properly, I had to slip the cable under the optical drive chasis on the opposite side of where the ATA33 cable goes under. Like the ATA33 cable, the ATA66 cable will need to be origami folded so that it is routed to the back of the chasis, which will be placed atop both origami folded cables, slid forward, and screwed back into place. The excess cable in the back will need to be rolled up and/or pushed in towards the back of the drives so that the metal plate can slide over the back of the chasis.

Yes. You can get an 80 wire IDE cable, which is about the same length as the existing ATA33 cable in the case, with two connectors. The one I got, which is a pretty standard length (I forget how many inches, but about the same lenght as the existing ATA33 cable) is just barely long enough to allow the case to swing fully open when connected to the motherboard. And there was just barely enough clearance to allow the chasis to slide into place, since, as you picked-up on correctly, I am using both the ATA33 and ATA66 busses at the same time.

If you want both drives connected to the ATA66 bus, you may be able to just move the connector from the cable that's currently plugged into the ATA33 bus over to the ATA66 slot. This may prevent your case from swinging fully open, however, and I'm not positive whether that is an 80 wire cable. You would basically have to swing the side of the case with the motherboard up slightly, hold it in place, insert the connector and close it fully, and remember never to open it fully when using this setup.

If I remember correctly, doing the above can cause some odd behavior with the eject button on the keyboard and eject icon in the toolbar. The system only wants to allow these eject functions on the ATA33 bus, so unless you're using software that is able to open and close the drives, you may run into problems.

Hi, Jacobo!

Where did you get the idea that the ATA-3/EIDE optical drive bus couldn't handle a 16X burn? I believe that you were misinformed. My DiscRecording.log file shows plenty of them with the drive connected to the optical drive bus. Here's a current extract:

Disk Utility: Burn started, Mon Jun 5 02:31:59 2006
Disk Utility: Burning to DVD-R media with DAO strategy in _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A 1.05 with generic profile via ATAPI.
Disk Utility: Requested burn speed was 47x, actual burn speed is 16x.
Disk Utility: Burn underrun protection is supported, and enabled.
Disk Utility: Burn finished, Mon Jun 5 02:40:23 2006

My disk image size was 4.36 GB. Burn time was 8 minutes, 24 seconds.

I hope this clears things up.

Gary

A 16x burn for that amount of data should be done in around 4 minutes and 30 seconds. The time that you gave is almost twice that which would be consistent with a 8x burn.

Which again, shows that the ATA/33 buss can only provide a maximum 8x burn.

jules771 (cc: Jacobo & Kevin):

You're math makes more sense than mine! Thanks for pointing this out. (I'd give you a "star" if it were my topic!)

Thanks to you, I now am drooling at the mouth about 4 1/2 minute burns and will perhaps have to rethink my own setup. I'm now tempted to pull the burner and temporarily jury-rig it to the Ultra ATA/66 bus just to experience what fast really is! Life was simpler before this came up and I was perfectly happy with my burn speed. Now, with each burn, I'll be thinking about how I could cut the time in half. I guess that ignorance is indeed sometimes bliss...

Thanks again - I learned something new today!

Gary

I have to admit, I'm kind of waiting for someone else to put it to the test. I don't have the longer cable and from what I've heard, there could be problems with using the eject and C key on start up.

But it's been great sharing these points with you guys and I've learned a lot on my end too.

best of luck,
j

Would it just be better to buy a card to put in. Possibly higher than an ATA66?

I would like to break the 13min burn at 16x

There's a senior Member who has a workaround for the eject & C key, if I could only remember who it is and where I saw it... He's running his optical from the ATA/66 bus. I'll look around. If I find it, I'll pass the info or try to point him here for some tips...

Gary

Found it... it's Dave at the following thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2407958#2407958

Gary

1GHz DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MHz B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner

Unfortunately I don't have the room to put another PCI card in. I've already got a SATA PCI card and a PCI slot fan.

Good idea though if you have the room.

I'm using Maxell 8x media and getting 6 minute burns (~10x) using the Optical drive buss. Haven't tried 16x media yet.

Regards,

Hi, WWJD!

Thanks for the info and glad to see you here!

Interesting... same optical bus speeds for the different G4s.

I'm going back to the drawing board to research the drives, firmware, media support, etc...

Regards,
Gary