Hey Netslider1000,

what kind of Chipset has your Motherboard ?

Intel i865

Update:
Been burning full 4.5GB discs that contain movies with DVD Decrypter at 12X. Takes about 7 minutes and haven't had any problems playing them back in my Sony DVD Player. Media is TY T02 and firmware is 2.8C SE.

Thx for the update Netslider. So the TY disks from Rima.com ARE in fact REAL. Are those DVD+R or DVD-R? Also, did you use the USB or Firewire port to flash inside the enclosure & how well did it go (smoothly)?

Well, I guess they are real. I really have know way of knowing for sure. I updated the enclosure firmware via the USB bus as beach-hobo suggested. I had no problems. I use the firewire interface for all other usage, including flashing the 3500 firmware successfully with several versions.

you do know that firewire is a faster mechanism than usb2 for transfer stream correct?

But it looks like you are not getting quite fast enough speeds to hit the 16x mark. Burst means nothing btw..sustained does and the only way to test that is to try a burn.

I can not beleive you can not get the drive to work well internally. It should be much faster than usb2 or firewire ever could be, ide driver issue most likely(hopefully you did not have application accelerator running).

Also need to know is the firewire ports on your motherboard or a pci addon card?

I have no issues (ie slowdowns) with the newer oxford 911 or 912 chipset and firewire with this drive at 16x.

But, once again this proves my point that using UDMA2 causes more of a bottle neck externally than UDMA4 drives (ie pioneer and liteons).

Jamos,
I do agree with you that the Oxford solution is more tham likely the best. But I think all 911 installations are not the same. I know for a fact that the ADS and Bekkin enclosures will not put the DVD drive in UDMA2 mode. I can only obtain 13MB/s with these case. I am not the only one that has reported this issue. With a hard drive you can't beat the 911, it doesn't have the delayed-write failure like the Prolific.

I think it comes down to the BridgeBoard design not the ShipSet used.

P.S. Can't get above 13MB/s even with the UDMA4 LiteOn 1633.

B-H

@Jamos
Thank you for your input. Yes, I know that even though technically the USB bus is faster than firewire (480Mbps vs 400Mbps) most often in the real world the reverse is true.

Max read speed with single layer DVD did hit 15.99X but max write seems to stall at 15X and I'm not sure why. For now I have accepted the max usable 12X write speed without much reservation. Better than not having a DVD writer at all which was the case two weeks ago.

Unfortunately I cannot use this drive internally as my main computer is a laptop. The firewire controller is onboard integrated. Texas Instruments IEEE-1394 Host Controller on an Intel i865 chipset motherboard.

And I was one of the people that had an Oxford chipset that did not set the DMA mode properly on the NEC 3500 and thereby limiting performance to 13MB/sec.

Tried out some Ridata 48X CDR's. What's interesting to note is 22MB/sec is easily reached while reading and writing, unlike writing a TY T02 DVD+R which hits 20MB/sec and starts to have problems.

CD: 22MB/sec?

Ha ha, whoops I goofed. You're right Crockett, 48X CD is 7.3MB/sec, not 22MB/sec. Must have drank too much beer last night.

Hmmm I just used my ADS dual drive enclosure to burn with my Liteon 1633 16x no slowdowns. I do not think you can paint all the enclosures with a broad brush (ie your tests may be alot slower or faster with the same enclosure with different computer hardware). I think we need to look at mboard bus speeds/drivers/harddrive transfer speeds also.

Let me put it this way, with my ADS enclosure/liteon 1633 I can write at 16x no problem with my AMD FX53 desktop (1394a ). With my laptop external firewire (shares pci bus with its firewire port) I can only get to write about 12x with the same drive and enclosure.

I think the older Oxfords did that.

Yeah, my old enclosure had an Oxford 911 chipset and is almost two years old. so it was the original chipset as far as I can tell.

I think what it all comes down to is people just want to be able to buy this stuff and have it work. There are a whole a bunch of bottlenecks and pitfalls you as a customer have to watch out for and coming to forums such as these and finding common experiences is very helpful.

Yes external enclosures are a big limitation. Can you use the drive internally?

@Jamos
Hmmm, did you read my post? I said only have a laptop, can't use the drive internally..

Anyways, I have been reading this thread and it appears the Taiyo Yuden T02's experience a slow down at the end of the burn on the 3500. Several different people post graphs showing this. Perhaps my enclosure and setup is not the cause of the odd behavior at the end of the T02 burn. "CAV burn reached 15x, then the speed is lowered. This is genuine Taiyo Yuden´s so I don´t think there really is a need for slowdown at the end. I will try a burn at "original" firmware 2.17." -Pinto2

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....ghlight=MCC004

Looks like I'll need to test with other media to find out who the culprit is.

oops guess I should of read that. Well you will be very lucky to get better than 10x burns with your laptop using any enclosure. My laptop with the same enclosure as I talked about can only burn 8x and its a p4 3.2 laptop it shares the pci bus with firewire and usb2. If you can get close to 16x burns your doing better than most with laptops. does your device buffer go down to 0 when it reaches close to 16x (that would be underrun) else it could just be the strategy.

beach I may have a prolific enclosure that needs a fw update you have a site link for this?

It posted on this site under NEC 3500AG External by another user hosting it.
It's version 9/7/2004. I understand there even a newer version but can't find it...

Does anyone who has an external usb2_Firewire enclosure with the Prolific 3507 chipset know why I'm I can't flash the the 0907 firmware-see attachment.

I'm thinking the upgrade would help the crappy burns I've gotten with a new DW1620 with Taiyo Yuden and Ricohjps01&02 via firewire this 8x rated meda. The chip on the bridgeboard has PL-3507 LF04163C written on it.

The one burn via USB2 on this media at 4x was ok.

Thanks

Well I may have the unflashable x37xxxx type chip but the only markings that I can easily find on the chip are PL-3507, LF0463C, & PA-961 Rev 1.0. Seems to work ok as a USB enclosure but I got plenty of those, sure wish the firwire worked

Edit: Yes, I did try flashing via USB.

Did you look on ther flip side of the BridgeBoard for the x39xxxx Chip ???? That's where my is located...

beach hobo or Netslider, when ordering from Dealsonic.com or any other retailer that has the Prolific chipset, will it come with the x37xxxx, x39xxxx, or there is no telling? I just wish retailers would use the latest chip (x39...) so the enclosure can be flashed if you wanted to do so.