actually what you say here is not accurate, earlier cd rom burners when
combined on a single scsi controller card cause many a cd disk to be
scrapped, this scrapping of cd disk is a result of an interruption.
in the scsi bus, the scsi device can take controll of the bus causeing an
interruption to the other scsi devices.
that interruption could cause a disk to be scrapped.
in fact i just read the 98 version of the hardware bible which suggest
useing 2 scsi controllers to prevent this from happening.
also any combination of scsi and ide drives can be used, if the scsi bus
is interrupted or the cd reader is not
sending information to the cd burner one can simpley copy the music cd to
the harddrive to over come this.
of course with newer burners engineers have solve these problems by makeing
the memory buffer in the burner larger.
the bigger the better.
so look for 1 or 2 meg buffers, in fact the 2 meg buffer seems to solve the
need for 2 scsi cards.
in the example you give the cd reader is 2 x so it could not keep up with a
4 x burner.
so make sure that you get a reader that is much faster than the burner.
bottom line the scsi burner and ide reader can work if the reader can keep up.
of course if you use this computer while burning an interruption might
cause a problem.
when i asked the manufactures if they would guarantee no disk scrapping
non said that they could.
now cdr versus cdr w debate is no big deal, cdrw allows one to rewrite to a
20 dollar disk, cdr uses non reuseable disk that cost 2 dollars.
if 2 dollars does not bother you cdr w is not required.
now about reliability, check the m t b f of the drive.
mean time between failures.
for instance the plextor 4 x writer is 100,000 hours.
the new plextor 8 x writer is 30,000 hours.
remember when compaired to the 4 x it writes twice as fast so for
compairison purposes
it is more like 60,000 hours.
reason being that in the 30,000 hours you will make the same number of cd
roms that would take 60,000 hours on the 4 x machine.
teac is introduceing a 6 x writer, no idea of its m t b f.
look for others to also introduce a 6 x or 8 x writer plus the ability to
play d v d.
