D.I.Y. External USB CDRW help

[invinciblesuperchan]

I wanted to make an external (~4x is good enough) USB 1.1 burner for my parent's to share. My mom has an iMac, and my dad has a laptop. It's mainly for backups and basic copying, so I don't really care about speed. It's just handy to have a portable to share.

What is involved in mixing and matching an EIDE CD-R with an external USB enclosure? I am tempted to just use an 8x HP9100 that's in my linux box that I never use, and track down a cheap enclosure.

Is there anything that I need to watch out for? Are some brands of enclosures better than others?

What have you guys mixed and matched? Any tips or experiences are very much appreciated...

Thanks.
Loren.

 

[vec]

From my experience with just one enclosure (sony), I was not able to get any other brand of burner other than Sony or a rebadged sony (HP) to work with it. Tried philips, yamaha, samsung, etc but nothing worked.

When purchasing an enclosure, view drive compatibility info before buying. Also if you decide to use your HP, make sure you find out what brand it really is. HP has used Sonys, philips and samsung burners burners in the past.