what do these cd-rw terms mean?

[Guest]

Ok I've found the cd-rw I'm interested in buying and the two in my price range are the:

Plexwriter 12/10/32A <----- Atapi

and the

Plexwriter 12/10/32 <------ EIDE

But i'm wondering what the atapi is? and what do I need two run either of these two drives. I'm assuming the eide drive is compatible with my vc820 mobo. But I'm not sure about the atapi?

 

[Arrow]

Atapi drives will work fine on an IDE channel.

Rob
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[RamaV]

No need to worry at all. What ATAPI is, is a bunch of years ago now, it was decided to try to standardize the drivers for IDE devices, in particular CD ROMS (this really doesnt apply to HDs), and essentially thats what ATAPI means, that its a model that uses the standardized drivers. All the new EIDE drives adhere to driver standards as well. This shouldnt be an issue for you in deciding on a new CD ROM, burner or really anyhting that mentions it (i cant think of any other IDE devices this pertains to, but lord only knows what im fogetting). The only time to consider non-ATAPI or an IDE device with non-standardized drivers, is for older models, id say prob more than 4 years or so.

Rama

" He who (BLEEPS) nuns, will later join the church " Joe Strummer, The Clash - "Death or Glory"

 

[Guest]

Actually on the box of my Plextor 12/10/32A is a sticker that says E-IDE ATAPI. AFAIK ATAPI means its for IDE/EIDE.
The other version 12/10/32S is SCSI.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by stanjk3 on 12/14/00 06:45 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

The IDE and ATAPI Plextors are the same burner, the box says exactly 'E-IDE (ATAPI) INTERFACE', go for this burner.

 

[Bandit]

Atapi is a driver standard for IDE devices. Personally, I would be be less inclined to use something with an alternate driver set as my boot disc (which I FINALLY perfected uses the standard atapi driver to allow me to use the CDRom/CDR/CDRW under DOS. Without a boot disc with a compatible CDRom driver for your CDRom, you will have an aweful time formating and installing windows. :/

As a side note, a good boot disc in my experiance contains the following files:
attrib
autoexec (configured properly)
chkdsk
command (of course)
debug
deltree
edit
fdisk
format
mscdex
pkunzip (or other good unzip software)
regedit
scandisc
sys
uninstall
and the following system (.sys) files
msdos
config (properly configured)
ebd
himem
io
aoatapi