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Installation
The A05 / 105 is an IDE
drive and like most CD/DVD drives the installation
was simple. The drive was detected in Windows
XP without any problems.
Auto insert notification
was enabled but we disabled it by changing
the registry key "KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Cdrom/Autorun=0".
DMA is normally successfully turned on by
default (if Windows XP can detect it). We
experienced no difficulty or strange behaviour
during installation.
Above we have a screenshot
from Infotool 1.02 as it examines
the A05 - it reveals some important features
which we will examine in this review.
It is reporting that the Read speed is:
32 x and write speed is 16 for CD-R disks.
This is faster than the Philips 228k (32
read & 12 speed write) and the Pioneer
A04. The buffer of this drive is 2,000KB
(no change from the A04).
You can see from above, that it can can
also read the DVD Alliance format's "+"
disks i.e. DVD+R & DVD+RW but not DVD-RAM
disks. The drive supports a buffer underrun
protection system for CDs and DVDs and can
report C2 errors. Its reporting that the
drive can write CD-Text, DVD-R, DVD-RW,
CD-R and CD-RWs disks. This drive also does
not support the packet writing standard
"Mount Rainer" which is available
in newer CD writers.
The drive's installation was a breeze
- it only took 10 minutes from disassembly
of the PC to having the DVD burner up and
running.
Our review drive is an August 2002 model
that came shipped with firmware version
0.70 (no update is available as the drive
isn't out for another 4 weeks).
The software we used for this review was:
DiskJuggler 4.01.1002, Nero
5.5.9.14, Record Now Max 4.12 DX
& CloneCD 4.0.1.10.
The above shows what Nero (5.5.9.14)
finds about the drive. You can see it supports
the overburning of CDs and the writing of
CD-Text information. The maximum writing
speed of CD-Rs is 16 speed with support
for DAO/96 and cuesheet modes. The DVD high
compatibility option has appeared and is
used to aid compatibility with certain DVD
players (by padding the disk with dummy
data to a minimum of 1GB).
The above screen shots are from DiscJuggler
4.01.1002 with more information revealed.
We can see that it reads DVD's at x 12 speed
which is very good but it's only for single
layered DVD-ROMs. Diskjuggler also
reports that it can rip audio CDs at 32
X speed - another improvement over the A04.
The A05 can read the "R->W"
subcodes.
The A05 can only write to CD-RWs at 8 speed
(which is slightly slower than the Philips
228k's 10 speed) and DVD-RWs at x2 (the
report above is wrong). The drive can now
read and write full 96 bytes sub-codes "PQ"
& "P->W".
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2 - Last Updated: 18 October 2002
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