External CD Burner

[wattie]

Hi,

I have recently bought an external CD burner. Not knowing much about these things I wondered if anyone would be able to give me some comments on what I have bought. The burner in question can be seen here: http://www.ricoh.co.jp/cd-r/e-/e_asia/drive/mp8040/index.html . I need the burner to be external because I will be running it from a labtop.

Is this burner any good? Or, late as this question may be, would I have been better to buy a different one? Also does anyone know if it would be likely to work with operating systems other than Win95, Win98 and NT4? If so what would I need to do?

Thanks to anyone who can give me any feedback - however little or big. 🙂

 

[Damascus]

SCSI is good. It works in every OS... better than USB, but
more $$$.

 

[wattie]

Thanks Damascus. That's good to know. 🙂

 

[corkyg]

You will need a SCSI PCMCIA host adapter to run it. But, when it is all said and done, you will have a solid burner system . . . more reliable than any internal ATAPI device.

USB would also be an option for a laptop, but USB 1.0 is really too slow. If you have USB 2.0, that is another matter . . . same with Firewire. Both are great for external burners on lappies. My lappy has a Firewire port and I use an external QueFire! CD/RW with it. It doesn't know the meaning of the word "coaster." 🙂

 

[wattie]

Thanks corky-g. 🙂 A PC Card is supplied with the burner. Does that count as a host adapter? Unfortunately my labtop does not have a Firewire port, and I am reasonably sure that the USB ports are USB1. Is there a way I can check to make sure? The manual doesn't seem to give any information about that.

BTW what is ATAPI, and why would an external SCSI based burner be more solid that it?