Hello, Roy.  Last week, you posted -

 RJT> I've been thinking about getting a burner for some time now.  So today
 RJT> I stopped by an Office Max store,  since they'd been advertising one
 RJT> for insanely low prices ($19.95 after rebates).  I had to ask the guy
 RJT> for "the cheap one", and looked at the box a bit,  to
see what they had
 RJT> for system requirements on there.  Unfortunately,  the minimum system
 RJT> required to support the drive (whose name and numbers I don't happen to
 RJT> recall,  unfortunately) was a P-II / 350, which is considerably faster
 RJT> than anything I happen to have here.

 RJT> I'm not sure if that "minimum system requirement" is a matter of
 RJT> running windoze and the software that they give you,  or if it's
 RJT> something else.

It gets worse than that - -
My original CDRW drive is a Teac 8x8x32.  Per the box, system
requirements were PII 300MHz or higher, Win95 or higher, 1GB or larger
HDD, 1.2MB/sec transfer rate or faster, and 12ms avg access time or
less.

The "Verbatim" 48x12x48 I got from OfficeMax for $20 AR for my son's
Christmas called for PIII 450 or faster, and BIR Win98 or better.

My newest $20 one from OfficeMax is a Pacific Digital, and the box lists
the following - - 128MB RAM minimum, Win98SE or newer, PII 800 MHz or
higher recommended for optimum performance.

I dunno about the OS requirements, but I'd assume that these may well
make use of the MMX instruction set, or at least that the software
which comes with them would.

 RJT> I also found out that the drive I was looking at wasn't the one that
 RJT> was as cheap as I'd been looking for,  but would've ended up costing me
 RJT> twice as much ($39.95,  after rebates) and I would've had to lay out


Wrong week.  I see in yesterday's paper that they have yet another brand
now for $20 - this one by "Polaroid" (I didn't know they had anything to
do with drives).

 RJT> Now,  first consideration here is the fact that the fastest machine I
 RJT> have on hand is a K6-200.  Also got a P200 handy that I'm not doing
 RJT> much with.  I don't know if this is going to be fast enough or not.

I disremember if K6 included support for the MMX instruction set. I'm
about positive that K6-2 chips do.  That might enter into it, if you
want to use the software which comes with the drive.

Another consideration - - these sale drives may just have the very
minimum of hardware on them - - and maybe like some of those Winmodems,
the software might not even install if you don't have a fast-enough
chip, with MMX support.


 RJT> Second consideration that comes to mind is that I'll probably be
 RJT> running this under linux,  not windoze, which I expect is going to have
 RJT> some effect on this.

Good luck with that.  I think best check one of the distros websites for
linux compatible hardware.

 RJT> Also,  can you slow these things down?

The only software I've used is from Adaptec, and it lets you go all the
way down to 1x when burning.

I guess you could give it a go, and this may be about the only way to
get definitive answers to your questions.  If one of these 'bargain'
CDRW drives just won't work for you, you could probably sell it to
someone else and about break even on your $20.

Good luck. - - -  JimH.

... Bother, said Pooh, as Windows wouldn't install his software.
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