Thus spake [EMAIL PROTECTED]: >>> I would recommend LaCie. They ship their CD burners with Toast >>> 5.02Lite - >>> which even provides for burning in the background. You may want to >>> think >>> about getting a FireWire or FireWire/USB combo PCI card for your 7300.
>> Rather than a card, get a Firewire Plus drive from APS Technogies... >> that's >> a switchable Firewire/USB drive. I got one to hook to our iMac, and it >> works great. >Wouldn't he need a card for his 7300 in order to use that drive? The >7300 doesn't have firewire or USB; it has only SCSI. >--Michelle I know that there are tradeoffs to any solution for this older Mac. I could go pure SCCI, but the trade off with that is the cost. IDE is what I am 99% leaning towards as a friend had recently gotten one for his 7300 and it's flawless in it. I want to use the newer cheaper than SCCI, quieter faster drives, particularly the 133 Maxtor. The trade off with an IDE card is the well reported (but not entirely quantified) stuttering problem with sound. Sound that also affects video. I am not yet sure that the newer cards have not fixed that problem. Most of the reported problems were with ATA 66 and below, Sonnet for one and I am hoping others have reportedly been hard at work fixing this problem. And IDE drives are supposedly less bulletproof over the long haul. But with a burner for serious back ups, when the time comes to replace the drive it will still be faster cheaper quieter than a SCCI. And I am getting really tired of the level of white noise coming from my Mac. Not worrisome "the drive is about to head south" noise, just normal noise that I don't hear so much on the newer macs or the PC's with the newer quiet IDE drives And so I have been looking at internal IDE CDRW drives that would go along with the new IDE card that I am buying anyway for the new ATA 133 HD. Recently I have been thinking more along the lines of an external CDRW solution though. And you are right, that would require a Firewire card, and therefore an upgrade to system 9.x. And not just a Firewire card, but a combo card. I already have several USB toys (printer, mouse, scanner, tablet). But the thing is, once I factor in all the parts I need to have, either must haves to run it or really must haves like Toast to run it well, the cost of a combo card and an external IDE CDRW is pretty similar to an external SCCI. And as I want a new Mac someday in my future, a Firewire external just makes more sense than SCCI. Oh, and isn't Emailer a great product too? (a token wave to what this list is really about) ;-) Thanks to those who have written me off line and made their suggestions. The best I have heard yet is the Yamaha drives. I hadn't realized it but some of those do come with Mac software. Doing a little quick math, it will cost me about $900.00 and change to get this Mac really rockin and where it can run system X. Looking at the newer Macs prices that is not so far off the price of a new iMac or G4. But, I get to afford this one piece at a time. And, it is kind of fun to play with over clocking and all. OTH It is pretty hard to take a step in any direction without one purchase decision necessitating other purchase decisions. Firewire combo cards to run external Firewire burners, System 9 to run anything Firewire (required). A bigger drive to even install a new system on because my 2 gig and back up 4 gig are at max capacity now. an IDE card to run the bigger HDs. SHeesh. Not a cheep fix that I can see. The new machines do come with loans. Hmmmmm .... Dave Groover ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
