Will a DVD take the place of your regular CD rom?



If you install a DVD that is 6X32 IDE ATPI, will that also take the place of your regular CD rom? or do you need both. I have 40X CD roms in both machines but 32X is still pretty fast, and I wanted to put a Burner in the new one asa well , Think 3 CDs in one machine are really necessary?

ekath (11) on 08/12/99 at 11:54:40 PDT

Ken.... I think that DVD can run cdroms just as well as the dvd. I don't think the new systems have both. DVD's will work with your other Cd Roms' that you still run. It's simply able to do both.

captain-kirk (184) on 08/12/99 at 12:02:01 PDT

ken: yep, ekath is right. *in general*, DVDS can run CDROMS as well. The first generation(s) had problems with some types of roms (such as CD-R), but by now they are pretty much OK with running both DVDs and CD-ROMs of almost every ilk.

You still need a cdrom burner, though, even with DVD-RAM (expensive but coming down) the DVDs won't WRITE CDROM media (different laser frequency), they will only write on the $20+ DVD media.

Effectively, if you can notice a difference between 32X and 40X, let me know, I'll sign you up for a Guiness Book of World Records! :)

Try to avoid 3 CDROM drives, it eats up a lot of your IDE capacity. Having two allows you to stick with just the secondary channel, leaving the primary free for harddrives and not requiring any add-on cards and such.

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I think that 32X is fast enough. I know that there are a lot of 50Xs out now and have read tests on one that was 100X but thats getting Bizzare. I seriously doubt that they can get one to read With 0% dropout at that speed.

killam (40) on 08/12/99 at 12:17:44 PDT

100x does not mean it spins 100x faster, neither does 50x mean 50x spin speed. They have multiple laser beams that pick up different tracks at the same time....one laser has it's beam split into many with mirors, then there are multiple sensors to pick up the receiving signal....FYI

chubby-1 (37) on 08/12/99 at 12:17:51 PDT

Ken: (Most of) those 100x CD-Roms use a large part of your HDD as a caching area, and there is some questions about "true" speed ratings.

captain-kirk (184) on 08/12/99 at 12:20:26 PDT

I think you'll find the "100X" drives have caching programs that copy everying to the harddrive. Or some equal foolishness. We've left the world of reality and entered "The Marketing Zone"...

Pretty soon CDROMs are going to be "read once", with all those lasers reading them at once..."5000X" must be just around the corner. Of course the CDROM drive will be as big as a volkswagon bug, and your lights will dim when you use it...

..back..