they even had rats in their white rooms, no wonder they got closed down

That would be very interesting. Especially if you could find any Vivastar blank media or test some burned Vivastars.


You own a Vivastar's drive too? Nice.
Vivastar was working on its own -RW/RAM drive from year 2000, the drive should be made in Vivastar's Swiss and Bulgarian facilities with Vivastar's own components and laser pickup.
...after a 1,5 year, they released a Vivastar branded OEM drive made by Matsushita (even with original Matsushita's firmware) and few months ago +RW drive made by Ricoh...
However, they were really working on drive builded completely from scratch (mainly in their Bulgarian subsidiary named Axora) which was quite dare, since Vivastar was a very small local company (with about 100 employees and no financial background) and there were only 3 or 4 manufacturers of RAM/-RW drives at that time - all were a huge gigants with thousands of employees worldwide (amongst them hundreds in R&D) and no financial limits.
So Vivastar after a few months of development spent all its money, in a attempt to save a situation released a Matsushita's OEM drive (still marketed as Made in Swiss by Vivastar) and went bankrupt in summer of 2002.
Nice info on this stuff (page 4):
http://www.storagesearch.com/storage...2002-april.pdf
By the way do you have an internal or external version?

Nobody was stupid enough to enter to dead business. In 2006 it was obvious even to most optimistic people that optical recordable media industry has no chance in Europe.

well the vivastar were already completely unreadable 3 years ago.............so nowadays they wouldn't even mount I think

my Liteon XJ-HD166S are the most amazing drives I have ever seen, quite franky

they are some of the very few that are officially DVD+R compatible, and they can fetch data on completely out of specs discs.

with a lot of patience and the BUZOF app clicking on RETRY as many times as required in IsoBuster, I was able to retrieve pretty much all my data from those fux0red MAM-E MCI4XG01/VIVASTAR.

I also used the CDBremse app to fluctuate the speed, some data was readable at 1X, some at 16X.......it takes a lot of patience tho

but in any other drive/burner they just wouldn't mount

don't put your hopes too high, I'm quite sure I dumped them all..........I was kinda scared that they might contain viral components(microbs, bacteries) that might as well contaminate my Verbs(TYG0x/MCC0xRG20)

no I bought that Pana drive in the US, and then I saw they were selling it as the RS-1 so I thought this was the perfect media for my burner.

I failed.

but they had a VIVASTAR burning app, and I still have it on original silver disc.

but, if you will find at least some burned Vivastars, please let me know
Do that burning app look like this one?
http://www.emocv.net/cd_dvd_burn.htm

yes, I think that's the same

but I got it on silver disc, navy blue with the VIVASTAR logo if you wanna add it to your collection

I'll see if I can find some burned discs, but I did some heavy spring cleaning last month

BTW, I checked my mails and they sent me the MBI -R replacement in August 2006..........so most likely they were making discs for MBI already ?

before that they were using Tayio +R and TDK -R dyes, and their PM told me that MCI4XG01 sucked so much because it was a lame try to make MCIG01 4X compatible.

MCIG01 was a patent from Mitsui Toatsu Chemicals, that used to be one of the top brands before the italian Computer Support bought their optical division

It is still unclear whether MAM-E did have a licences for using TDK/MBI/TY MID codes. I doubt it and even if yes, they were using only MID codes of those companies, not stampers and dye.
I think that they just "borrowed" those MID codes like many other smaller manufacturers (especially in Asia). MAM-E certainly was not manufacturing any media for aforementioned companies and I do not think that they have any license for using their MIDs.
Look at this MAM-E medium with TY code - stamper does not look like TY stamper at all. If Taiyo Yuden was indeed a partner of MAM-E and licensed TY MID, it will certainly support official TY stamper and did not allow to sell media with such bad craftsmanship - look at the bubble in the middle, the result of bad bonding.
http://dvd-r.jpn.org/media/zoom/MAM-E_P8x.jpg
http://dvd-r.jpn.org/media/MAM-E_P8x.html
And MAM-E had also another problems - the old Mitsui dye was not usable for speed over 2x, so they had to use dyes from other manufacturers, e.g. Organica.
And support of their MIDs by drives' firmwares was also quite poor.


thanks I hope you will find at least a few pieces, you are my last hope

well I've used and still have a lot of MAM-E TTH01

my sister bought some DVD-cased TDK discs that were TTH01 as well.

I compared them, apart from the top which was obvisouly using different brands, and that the MAM-E had their usual hub code..........the stamper code was the same(I will tell you what it is when I'll find the guts to run them through KProbe).

I believe they were making those discs for TDK actually.

I exchanged a lot of emails with their PM, and from what I recall that's pretty much what he was telling me....he called it "outsourcing"

I still don't understand what makes the spikes in the outer edges of the metalized layer on crappy media ?!

I've had the issue on all the MCI4XG01, and it got worse and worse over time.........also a bit on their TTH01 but they were still readable(I think....)

also on some Verb TYG02, but very rare and very small too.

and even on some CMC Verb MCC03RG20.......where the Prodisc have perfectly clean edges......

why does it get worse over time ?

I put some pix here :
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f33/verbati...-layer-247010/

and something I've noticed with the Verb MCC03RG20 is that they seem to get some condensation after a while on the recordable side ?!
if I use a microfibre fabric, then it goes away......weird...

The spikes in reflective layer are caused in metallizing or edge cleaning process.
The flaws in dye layer or with disc bonding are generally more often than flaws in reflective layer and personally I never saw such spikes in reflective layer on "good" media like Verbatim or TY.
Where do you store your media, what is the average temperature in your room?
Back to the topic. If anybody has any SkyMedia made media, please post scans here or in "Blank DVD Media Tests" thread.
And let me know if you know where I could still get some f 1-8x SkyMedias (made in Swiss) or any Vivastar media or if you have some informations on both companies or even pictures from their factories. Thanks.

I'm from France, so temp is I dunno between 20/30C depending on the weather

I store them in cd wallets in a dark cool place, and I take great care of them.

actually all these discs had spikes when they were new from the factory.

except maybe the MCI4XG01, I believe they grew overtime getting worse and worse

I talked about it to the MAM-E Production Manager, and he said it got like that on the MCI4XG01 coz the dye sucked....and that on the TTH01 it would never reach the data section.

soon or later I'll put his word under the guillotine

I'm just very P%SSED OFF that each time I buy DVD media it craps out on me...

you still got the option to go RAID5 with 5*1TB drives.........then no more problems....maybe

coz a RAID array can still go down, and you end up screwed up to the bone...

Is it the near future yet?

Thanks for posting.

It's interesting how in the second last image the computer is such old gear. The ball-tracking wheel-less Microsoft mouse is the first thing I noticed. :)

Do not forget that those pictures are 4 years old. (and those PCs were not only 2 years at that time).

Hey Pepst;

I see you're interested in rare and old DVD medias, like the ones in your sig. I am quite curious, precisely what do you want these discs for?

BTW media production in Europe is not totally dead (I don't think). A French company called MPO (Moulages et Plastiques de l'Ouest) still manufactures CD-Rs and DVDs, and I just read a press release saying they're doing BD now.

http://www.mpointernational.com/

They have a very nice range of CD-Rs called "HiSpace" which are both extremely good looking, physically, and have usually given me good results, so far at least, in terms of burn quality.

You can find these here
http://www.card-rohlinge.de/cr_xt/index.php?cPath=39_40
I must have bought over 100 of these in the last year, maybe even 200 and am very happy, the only problem I've ever had is that my recording hardware doesn't know them very well and will only burn them at low speeds like 24x and 32x

The only unfortunate thing is that the online shop I bought them from, Card Rohlinge of Heidelberg (link above) seems to be letting their stock run down - when I first starting buying discs there, they had 10, 50 and 100 packs of Blue, Green, Red, Pink, Orange and Black, now it's only blue, green, and individual black. Not sure what's going on there.

Hi SeanW,
I want all those rare and old media for testing and collecting reasons.
And unfortunately it seems that also MPO ceased the production of CD-R and DVDR media. It is a pitty because their media (especially CD-Rs) were really good.

I would say the GOLD DVD+R's seem to be really good ! The CD-R's were ok.

Do you have any experiences with MPO's gold DVD-Rs?
Are they equally good as DVD+Rs (of course I am expecting a much worse fw support...)? And with FTI's gold CD-Rs made with MPO stampers? Or does FTI just use MPO's ATIP for its gold CD-R media and stamper from dífferent manufacturer?

Well, I don't know if this is any use to you, but I spotted this UK online store selling "Sky" 8x DVD+R.
http://www.diskdepot.co.uk/acatalog/DVDR_Plus_8x.html
Dunno if it's one of the ones you're looking for.

And like I said, that shop in Germany that I linked to before is selling it's stockpile of MPO CDs, if you like them you might want to grab some now becuase if it is a residual stockpile, once it's gone that's it.
I certainly agree that MPO CDs were/are good.

Thanks for the link - but those Sky media are made in Asia and have fake MID codes (the quality is surprisingly good though, but I am looking for Sky DVDs made in Swiss) and it is not worth to order them from abroad for me. I was trying to get some of them directly from Slovakian company UMC Slovakia (daughter company of now defunct SkyMedia Manufacturing), which is the source of those Sky and Swisstec media, but they are selling media only in their factory shop and not by post....

Just one silly question/
Do you get sexually aroused from watching this photos?

I just drool, wish I worked there, and go about my business.