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| Thread ID: 57151 | 2005-04-25 01:36:00 | Advice on DVD Burner/Player Needed | vinref (6194) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 348527 | 2005-04-25 01:36:00 | After a little fiddling I managed to view an mpeg file on my ancient machine to a fairly acceptable quality using mplayer. My machine is a Pentium II 350MHz with 128Mb ram and an ATI Mach64 graphics card. Does this mean I will be able to install a DVD burner/player and view DVDs? The prices are now ~$100 for dual-layer burners/players, but I don't want to waste money if it isn't going to run. The packaging warning does say a 500MHz+ CPU is required. Thanks |
vinref (6194) | ||
| 348528 | 2005-04-25 01:39:00 | Vinref, what OS are you running? If you're using Win2000, WinXP or even WinME you would be able to install and run the DVD-RW only it would be exceptionally slow and your system would likely lag severely. I would recommend installing a DVD Burner on a machine with at least 256MB of RAM and a 600MHz Processor. Anything else is going to just frustrate you. EDIT: Another thing I thought of is that a PC of that age would most likely be using ATA-66 as the Drive Bus. The ATA-66 bus is much too slow for the high data transfers involved in burning DVDs' and you would probably find that the burn speed would be throttled to the lowest value. |
Aurealis_ (7897) | ||
| 348529 | 2005-04-25 02:15:00 | Vinref, what OS are you running? If you're using Win2000, WinXP or even WinME you would be able to install and run the DVD-RW only it would be exceptionally slow and your system would likely lag severely . I would recommend installing a DVD Burner on a machine with at least 256MB of RAM and a 600MHz Processor . Anything else is going to just frustrate you . EDIT: Another thing I thought of is that a PC of that age would most likely be using ATA-66 as the Drive Bus . The ATA-66 bus is much too slow for the high data transfers involved in burning DVDs' and you would probably find that the burn speed would be throttled to the lowest value . I run FreeBSD 4 . 11 . And yes, it is an ATA-66 bus . I think I will hold off on the DVD purchase . |
vinref (6194) | ||
| 348530 | 2005-04-25 03:08:00 | It will work. Playing movies on it though dpends as much on your graphics card which is rather old for it. But it would install, I've put DVD players (not burners) in fairly old machines and the rsults have been tolerable although not brilliant. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 348531 | 2005-04-25 03:42:00 | It will work. Playing movies on it though dpends as much on your graphics card which is rather old for it. But it would install, I've put DVD players (not burners) in fairly old machines and the rsults have been tolerable although not brilliant. Mmmmm. Great news pctek! I run a CD-burner at 1x speed and it works fine. Is this similarly resource-intensive as a dvd-burner at 1x speed? Time is not of the essence for me, as I do schedule burns (rsync backups) that are quite small but regular. I mostly want a DVD player, but I also need a burner as I have a Compaq and those ars*****s were considerate enough to build a case that is non-standard and won't fit 2 x 5.5 inch bays. |
vinref (6194) | ||
| 348532 | 2005-04-25 04:03:00 | A 1x DVD-ROM drive transfers data at a rate of 1,250 KBps which is equivalent to about 8x CD-Burner speed. At 1x CD-burners' transfer data at a rate of 150 KBps. The ATA-66 bus is capable of 66MBps theoretical bandwidth... So, I was wrong and the bus will handle the burner fine. You should probably invest in RAM to bring your total up to 512MB though. |
Aurealis_ (7897) | ||
| 348533 | 2005-04-25 04:14:00 | ATA 66 bus is faster than my posting speed :-) | PaulD (232) | ||
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