De Weedy

I got myself a DVD burner.

I think the first sentence warns you already. Geek Alert!

Yessir, I got myself one of those newfangled all-formats-supported burners. The LG DVDRAM GSA-4040B, or HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4040B. (A joint venture between LG and Hitachi.)

I plugged it in on my secondary IDE cable, as the slave to my Sony CRX104E 8x4x32 CD burner. Both drives were set to Cable Select mode. BIOS detection took extra long, and its name was some weird characters. Later I found there was only one drive in Windows XP, and although a CD-ROM was placed in both drives, nothing appeared.

I then swapped it so the DVD burner was master and CD burner slave, with the appropriate manual jumper settings. It worked! Of course, Ahead Nero was already registered to the CD burner only, so I used Pinnacle’s InstantDVD+CD software for the DVD burner.

I burnt one CD-R with the DVD burner, and it worked well. I have yet to buy any blank DVD media. 🙁

As a CD burner it’s rated 24x12x32, reading DVDs at 12x. It writes DVD-RAMs at 3x, DVD+RWs at 2.4x, DVD-RWs at 2x and DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs at 4x. Of course, a DVD’s 4x is different from a CD’s 4x… a DVD’s 1x is 1385 Kilobytes per second, while a CD’s 1x is a mere 150 Kilobytes per second. Hence, burning a DVD-R at 4x would be 5540 Kilobytes per second. Divide that by 150 Kilobytes per second, and it’s equivalent to burning a CD at 37x.

I don’t really have any practical use for a DVD burner… I got it cheap just for the heck of it, and as a status symbol. 🙂 I had a few DVDs to play anyway, and I’d probably back up my huge MP3 collection on two DVD+RWs.

Oh, and I used DVD Region Free to circumvent the possible regional problems related to DVDs. Sweet. However, playing Metallica – St. Anger original DVD had some problems – at quieter parts, the sound would disappear halfway, as if the sound moved to another channel. (I have 2 cheap speakers on a Creative SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 soundcard.) Even choosing stereo Dolby Digital in the menu made no difference.

Why not be happy with my CD burner? Well, a blank DVD-R still costs less than 7 CD-Rs of the same capacity. 🙂

On a side note, my dad’s Relisys 1569 15″ CRT monitor is FANTASTIC. I never knew until I was reinstalling Windows 98 SE on it. It could go 1024×768 at 85 Hertz and 1280×1024 at 60 Hertz, or a maximum of 69 Kilohertz! Such high frequency ratings are only supported on 17″ CRTs! I personally can’t stand anything below 85 Hertz so this was really neat. I wonder if their 17″ and 19″ CRT monitors have high frequencies too. (Anybody know any monitor that can do at least a 102 Kilohertz vertical refresh?)

0 thoughts on “De Weedy

  1. Alex Post author

    The other day at my hometown, I tried out a Acer 17" Flat screen monitor (forgot the model number) which had the same capabilities of a 19"

    It even does 1600×1200 at 85Hz. Really cool for a 17 incher. Unfortunately for extreme resolutions above 1280×1024, I had to use 75Hz as 85Hz can’t fill up the entire screen. This might be something you would look for. 19" resolution in a nice 17" package.

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