-=> CHARLES ANGELICH wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 CA>> I'm using NERO and getting messages something like "unable
 CA>> to determine power settings" or something like that.
 CA>> Sounds as though the laser isn't powering on/off correctly
 CA>> and the burner is just worn out. It's about 5+ years old
 CA>> maybe 8? Anyhow - it's old if you know what I mean. :-)

 WC> Stupid question, have you cleaned the optics with a
 WC> cleaning disc designed for this purpose?

 CA> Nope. Never even saw one. There was some discussion about
 CA> cleaning CD burner 'optics' in the W95 echo and, as I recall
 CA> it, the consensus was that the cleaning disk was a scam. It
 CA> would never touch the 'optics' since they don't drag on the CD
 CA> nor would they drag on the surface of a 'cleaner' disk.

Hmm, almost bought one at the convenience store out front as
it had laid on the shelf so long the price was right but
someone snagged it the day before I went in to buy it.

If the CD cleaner has a raised buffing surface that can reach the
optics and a gentle cleanser I can see it working, if not, not.

I can HEAR my 1.44 drive cleaner diskette's material hit the
heads when I do a dir a:

 WC> Not sure if there's an optical output sensor though I know
 WC> these solid state LASER's use a current sensor lead to
 WC> regulate power.

 CA>> Any recent sales on at Best Buy, Office Max, or Office
 CA>> Depot where I can snag a CDRW cheap? My machine and hard
 CA>> drive are too slow to feed a DVD burner or I'd go that
 CA>> route. :-\

 WC> How slow is too slow? My inquiry concerns my H.P. 433
 WC> Celeron I intend to upgrade to a Ultra133 I/O card and
 WC> drive. RAM speed limited to PCI 66 revision 1.

 CA> Well if my present CDRW burner is having buffer 'under-runs'
 CA> even at 4x I'm assuming my hard drive is not capable of keeping
 CA> up with a DVD burner/buffer?

You appear to need the same solution as I, a Ultra133 I/O card
and Ultra133 hard drive. For the I/O card Belkins and SIIG
appear to offer what I'm looking for. ( www.compusa.com)

I finally got around to getting a very small 340 Meg hard drive
into the H.P. Pavilion.

Next I'll yank the crap software modem - sound card combination
and replace it with the Turtle Beach sound card.

After that I'll see about moving it over to where I can get at it
for regular use.

I never really looked into the options for saving settings
from Knoppix to a small DOS or Linux partition and loading applications
from the CD into ramdrive so it'll be a learning experience.

I figure I'll give it a 128 Meg swap file and whatever is left
past the DOS partition to saving my settings for mail, newsgroups,
mail, dialer, ect.

Going to be a darned weird machine in any case, 256 Meg of RAM,
340 Meg of hard drive, DOS 5.0 - Win 3.1 or interupting the boot
to boot from the Knoppix CD to run Linux.

Don't know if it'll mess up anything were I to try to install
the dual boot option on a FAT 16 partition but it worked flawlessly
on my former FAT 32 6.4 Gig hard drive.

The lame RAM test on boot gives me plenty of time to hit the ESC
key and select boot options so I really don't need dual boot
until I get a new drive.
 
--- MultiMail/PBellDOS v0.42