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Plextor making scsi units anymore?

Sgraffite

Sgraffite

Senior member
I just saw yesterday that Plextor announces a 24x10x40 atapi model slated for release in August. Their atapi 16x10x40 has been out for a few months now, but the latest scsi model is the 12x10x40. Back when I bought my burner, they didn't even make atapi/ide drives at the time, but now it seems the reverse is true. Has anyone heard anything about this situation? I never saw an announcement that they had decided to forgo the manufacturing of scsi models. Any input would be appreaciated.
 
Plextor has stopped manufacture on all their SCSI CDRW's, the fastest Plextor SCSI drive is still the 12X writer you mentioned.

There has been a lot of interestint in Plextor maiking faster SCSI writers but thus far their continuing their IDE only mantra.
 
I don't see a reason to go with a SCSI any longer now that they have burn proof technology. I had my friend grab a SCSI Plextor when cpu speed were slower and buffer underruns were a problem, but now with faster CPU's (faster than most of us need) and the burn proof technology, there really is no need. 16x is 16x, aint it no matter if it's scsi or EIDE?

Just my opinion..

Sal
 
Because SCSI is a better bus that is not built like a really fast parralel port? Supposedly those fast ide drives have much better seek rates, but in many benches, SCSI drives, even of lower speeds, beat them in transfer rates. Dunno if this holds true to CD-RWs.
 
I get your point with other scsi devices, but I can't tell the difference in speed between my friends 12x SCSI Plextor and my 12x EIDE Plextor. They both take about the same time to burn a disc.

Sal
 
SCSI Is a better bus design then IDE, there is no doubt. Unfortunatly, due to PC predominance, SCSI never really took off (PCs going back some time tend to use IDE, while all other platforms (outside of VAXen, which use their own proprietary stuff) tend to go SCSI), really quite a shame, the real reason for Plextor abandoning SCSI is that the market just is not there, with todays commodity PCs, everything is about price and processor power.
 
It's getting more and more obvious that Plextor has sold out all its supporters in the SCSI market. It's introducing a 24x IDE burner next month and still nothing but a 12x SCSI burner. Further evidence is the fact that they don't reply to any questions about new scsi drives but will respond to questions about IDE (albeit with no info, but at least they reply).
 


<< I get your point with other scsi devices, but I can't tell the difference in speed between my friends 12x SCSI Plextor and my 12x EIDE Plextor. They both take about the same time to burn a disc. >>



But of course it'll complete a disc in about the same time. They're both 12x burners, rated to do a CD in XXX minutes.

It's not about the speed it takes to burn a disc, it's about system performance as a whole when you have a SCSI burner vs. an IDE burner. My CPU usage goes up dramatically when I burn with an IDE burner than it does when I burn with a SCSI burner.
 
I totally agree with you Lore SCSI drives take up less CPU power when burning. Besides for those of us that already have a SCSI card sitting there might as well go for a SCSI. The moment Plextor stopped making SCSI is the moment when I stop buying their drives ^^
 
IDE vs. SCSI doesn't matter much for burners. Think about it: the world's fastest burners go at 24x. That's only 3.6MB/s. That can be handled easily even by PIO mode 4 (16.7MB/s). The only possible leg up that SCSI might have is with reliability, but that advantage is removed by either burn-proof and other such technologies or an OS with an I/O subsystem that doesn't suck at sustaining a lousy few MB/s to an IDE channel.
 


<< I totally agree with you Lore SCSI drives take up less CPU power when burning. Besides for those of us that already have a SCSI card sitting there might as well go for a SCSI. The moment Plextor stopped making SCSI is the moment when I stop buying their drives ^^ >>


Agreed/SCSI is an entirely different world... A good one at that !
 
The whole point of a SCSI burner, IMO, is that you can do other things when you burn a disc. So what if IDE and SCSI cd burners have burnproof? With scsi you may never even have to utilize burn proof. Lets say you burn a disk on a scsi burner and you browse the web or play a game or play mp3s, chances are the burnproof wont even kick in because the scsi bus is efficient and you burn a full disk in 6 minutes. Try doing that on an ide burner and burnproof will be on all the time and it will take many times longer to burn the same size disc. A SCSI cdburner is definately the way go if you can get it.
 
In addition to the CPU usage, the effects of the inferior bus is noticeable as soon as the CD burning commences. My mouse movement lags a bit, my Winamp clicks and pops like crazy (I asked the forum about this a few months ago and was told this is inherent of the IDE bus interfering with the sound card, don't know if this is really the case or not) and everything feels slower.

And this is on a dual processor P3-1.0 Ghz w/ 1 gig of RAM! Imagine the slugginess that one must experience with a system half as powerful.
 


<< The whole point of a SCSI burner, IMO, is that you can do other things when you burn a disc. >>



That was pretty much the point of my &quot;OS with an I/O subsystem that doesn't suck&quot; comment. Under Linux, I can easily do other things while burning on my IDE 8x4x32 without burn-proof. Even burning as a normal user where the burning program can't get realtime priority, I haven't had the program buffer go below 67% full (the program buffer being the section of system memory the program uses as a buffer, not the drive's buffer), even when doing a compile of KDElibs from CVS or starting up StarOffice (the only program that can cause my MP3s to skip).
 
The reason I like scsi is I can have all my cd and dvd drives on the scsi bus and save my ide channels for ide hard drives (since scsi hard drives cost so much). I haven't ever used and ide burner, but with my scsi unit I don't think I have ever had a buffer underrun. I've played games and dvds at the same time I burned a cd and it has always completed successfully.
 
I can't record CDs while playing games?? I'm PRETTY sure I can wait 6 minutes before I start my game 😉
 
I know this is off topic, but I really do think Scsi is better just because of the ability to multi task while burning. Sure it only takes 5 minutes, but what if you wanna do stuff while you're burning. Also, I have the Plextor 12x10x32 scsi cdrw and a 8x20 and with my 12X, I don't ever need to use the burn proof option. I did own an ide Plextor with burnproof and you can tell it takes a little longer to burn a cd when using that burnproof.

SCSI=burnrpoof.
 


<< I can't record CDs while playing games?? I'm PRETTY sure I can wait 6 minutes before I start my game 😉 >>


Yes, however, an IDE chain holds a maximum of two drives, a SCSI chain can hold what, 16 drives per chain? And its faster? Seems to me that for those reasons alone SCSI is worth preserving, not to mention its lower processor overhead and hardware raid.
 
Well, from a performance stand point, the consensus seems that IDE and SCSI drives are comparable based on the same rated speed.

For my purpose, however, I prefer SCSI because of it's robust driver support for modern (and old, I suppose) OS. I've always dreaded when I had trouble enabling DMA on certain system configurations. When it works, it works beautifully (IDE). But when it doesn't, it's extremely annoying. At one point, I had to disable DMA for the CD drives to get it to function properly. With DMA enabled, the whole system hard locked when the system accessed the CD drive. Then it would work again in few minutes....and then become frozen again, and so on. After disabling DMA, system worked fine. However, whenever there is access to IDE drives, the mouse starts stuttering and the system overall became sluggish. To have an enjoyable operating environment, you NEED DMA 😉 BTW, this problem I had was a VIA based board using VIA 4-in-1 4.25 (maybe 4.26?) drivers. Hopefully the latest 4-in-1 solved the problem already. Note that this problem happens only with certain hardware and hardware combinations (such as using OLD IDE devices that cannot handle DMA reliably).



Another disadvantage, IMO, is that IDE performance, stability, and functionality is largely dependent on chipset manufacturer's driver support. Just look how long we came with VIA's 4-in-1 drivers. 😉 Each time a new motherboard chipset (specifically, south bridge chip) becomes available, we'd have to be concerned with driver maturity for IDE, for _EACH_ OS. EVERYTIME you switch to a different chipset platform. And for a frequent upgrader like me, it bugs the heck out of me.

After going SCSI, all I do is transplant the SCSI card and devices to the new rig and she's good to go. Like Ron Popeil Rotisserie, &quot;Set it, and forget it!!&quot; 😉 With any recent OS, there already are good, old, and robust SCSI drivers already included on the OS disc for major brand SCSI cards.

For the hard drives, I use both SCSI and IDE (SCSI for OS/apps, and IDE for large, multimedia files). You simply cannot beat the price/peroformance ratio of a good IDE hard drive.

Tako/tako_chu
 
Why is everyone reacting like I just said that SCSI is the biggest POS invention in the history of all mankind? I know it has it's advantages. I just find it amusing that most people have dumb of petty reasons for &quot;justifying&quot; owning SCSI devices such as &quot;I can't play minesweeper while making CDs&quot; or &quot;While I'm burning, I only have 1100MHz left out of 1200Mhz!&quot;
How about something more like &quot;My 4400rpm Quantum LCT isn't fast enough to capture full-screen video?&quot;

Personally, If it was that big of a deal to me, I'd just rather throw another system together for making CDs or for LAN gaming when friends come over rather than hoping I can find someone to brag to about my $3000 worth of hard drives in my only system 😉
Besides, my 12x TDK seems to do just fine while I'm doing other stuff and I have yet to see BP kick in.

Still, I know SCSI was the main favorite feature of Plextor drives for many people and i think it's a shame that they don't seem to be making them anymore. I have a SCSI setup in one of my older systems and it's pretty sweet but it's overkill for even the above-average Joe Schmoe these days 🙂
 
Plextor has lost my business, I always upgraded to the latest and greatest burners plextor put out, but now 16x and 24x are IDE.. bahooey!

As far as SCSI sucking, I love it, got my 12x plex here with a 2940uw dual scsi card, I had 1 coaster in over a year and yes I burn and surf at the same time without having to worry about failures.

Plextor relealized most of the sales are IDE to those folks who either hate scsi or just dont want to deal with it.

As ObiDon put it, there focusing on the Joe Schmoe user.

If there is a plextor employee in the house, start making scsi burners again dammit!!
 
Well, another advantage to scsi drives is the ability to put them in an external case. I used to use a tower system, but I have since sold that and now use my laptop as my primary computer. Since I already had my Plextor 40x MAX scsi cdrom drive and my Plextor 12/10/32 scsi cdrw drive I just bought a 2 bay external enclosure and put them both in there.
 


<< &quot;While I'm burning, I only have 1100MHz left out of 1200Mhz!&quot; >>



It's more like &quot;While I'm burning, I only have 650Mhz left out of 1200Mhz!&quot; Yes. It's true. The overhead - especially if you're doing CD -> CD on a purely IDE bus (Although I don't even think my Pioneer DVD drive can be the source CD for my Plextor 12x10x32 IDE) - is extraordinarily high. The system just crawls.




<< How about something more like &quot;My 4400rpm Quantum LCT isn't fast enough to capture full-screen video?&quot; >>



That too, but see, that's just another vein in the same argument that SCSI drives have a lot less CPU utilization and therefore allows more CPU power to be dedicated to other important tasks such as video capturing at 640x480.



<< Personally, If it was that big of a deal to me, I'd just rather throw another system together for making CDs >>



Or you can save that $700+ and invest it in 1 SCSI burner and an average SCSI card. 🙂

I understand your arguments about system functionality - yes, the computer still functions, and yes, most users will probably let the cd burn (takes all of 8 minutes) before they do anything else, but we're talking about power users here, who want nothing but the best. Otherwise, why would we quibble over SCSI? I doubt the joe-schmo user wants to spend that much money on an I/O subsystem that is totally overkill for their needs!
 
I am planning to buy a SCSI Plextor 12x10x40x. I am still planning to but I was wondering if there may be matched SCSI CD Burner with the higher speeds?
 
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