Topic: installing an NEC DVD drive

[pfife]

btw- I have a NEC drive with a Dell desktop - its fine.  My machine came w/ a cd rom and a cd-r, so I just removed the cd-rom and looked at the jumper config on the one I took out.  Matched that on the DVDburner, and it worked no problem.

which machine: your computer or the DVD-/+R drive? my Dell only came w/ one cd tray (a cd-r dvd readable drive).

If you are replacing that one, read what the jumper position is on the cd burner, and mimic that on the dvd drive.  That's if you're taking the cd-r drive out.

no i am planing leaving the existing one in and adding this drive. so i must need to either A. set this drive up as a slave drive or B. set it up using CS.

right.  Try cable select. 

[Chris K]

when you turn on your computer, does the dvd drve appear to be getting power? does a light go on and or does the tray open/close?

[ScottT]

Did you get this figured out T.J.?

To get into the BIOS on a Dell, you need to hit F2 before the operating system loads.  Basically, just turn the PC on and hit F2 every second until you get into that screen.  From here it will show you what is currently on your IDE channels - usually a hard drive on one and your original CD-ROM on the other.  Since you can connect two devices on each channel, pay attention to what it says for the unused connections.  Sometimes they are set to OFF.  You need to change this to AUTO so it will auto-magically detect your new drive.

On the DVD drive you need to set the jumper to either CS, Master, or Slave.  CS will hopefully work, otherwise you must set it for Master or Slave depending on which connection on the IDE cable you are using.

I was Googling for a picture of the jumpers and stumbled across a very informative and entertaining guide:

"Even a cat would be able to install a DVD+/-RW drive, if we had opposable thumbs"




 

It'll walk you through what you need to know.  Good luck!

[T.J.]

when you turn on your computer, does the dvd drve appear to be getting power? does a light go on and or does the tray open/close?

yeah everything seems to be working

Did you get this figured out T.J.?

To get into the BIOS on a Dell, you need to hit F2 before the operating system loads.  Basically, just turn the PC on and hit F2 every second until you get into that screen.  From here it will show you what is currently on your IDE channels - usually a hard drive on one and your original CD-ROM on the other.  Since you can connect two devices on each channel, pay attention to what it says for the unused connections.  Sometimes they are set to OFF.  You need to change this to AUTO so it will auto-magically detect your new drive.

On the DVD drive you need to set the jumper to either CS, Master, or Slave.  CS will hopefully work, otherwise you must set it for Master or Slave depending on which connection on the IDE cable you are using.

i gave up last night and am back at it today. in  a second i will be getting into the BIOS screen and making sure it is set to automatic.
as far as connecting the drive goes: i don't seem to have any jumpers available to me. i have the I/O BUS connection (pictures below), two four pin connectors, and a couple others which DO NOT fit into the dvd-r drive. i can see where in the back of the dvd-r drive where the it would connect, but i don't seem to have anything that fits in there. i can snap pistures if it would help. 

[T.J.]

okay i finally got this thing working and recognized by my cpu. after looking at the link scott provided me (yes, w/ the cats) i realized i wasn't looking for a cable to plug into the master/slave /cs jumper. you simply must put the plastic cover around the two pins you want the drive to act as. the dvd-r drive i was trying to install was set as the master. this was causing all my problems. i took the plastic covering and put it over the CS on the back of the dvd-r dirve. once this was done it was smooth sailing. thanks you everyone for the help +T on the house

[pfife]

+T glad you got it working.   Describing what the jumpers look like on a mb is kinda difficult... sorry!   I got stung by jumpers when I was first trying to figure out how to install a second hard drive on a Win98 machine a long time ago...

[T.J.]

okay i am revisiting this thread b/c i have encountered a weird problem. i have been using the dvd burner that i installed primarily for flac files and it has worked fine. the other day i burned a couple wav files on a dvd-r blank and tried to play it back through my computer. on most tracks the wav file is distorted. it sounds similar to a skipping cd. i not sure if my computer has issues w/ dvd-r blanks or maybe their is something wrong w/ driver. i may be able able to put a sample on later. has anyone else experienced a problem like this ?

[Ed.]

were you running other programs when you burned the wav files?  did you burn the files as audio or data files?  did the buffer get bogged down when you were burning?

with an old burner I had, if i burned anything faster than 4x then i'd get skips all over my dvds and cds.  Mainly because the write buffer kept getting bogged down.

[T.J.]

were you running other programs

no

did you burn the files as audio or data files? 

audio

did the buffer get bogged down when you were burning?
with an old burner I had, if i burned anything faster than 4x then i'd get skips all over my dvds and cds.  Mainly because the write buffer kept getting bogged down.

to my knowledge, no. fwiw i think i was burning @ 8x, i was using dvd-r, and when i installed the drive i set the jumper to CS

[Ed.]

hmm, i've never burned audio files to a dvd before other then when i make a dvd-a.  but thats a totally different process.

I'm not for sure, but that might be a problem.  I would think that if you burned the wav's as data files, you wouldn't have the problem anymore.  if the files are data files, you can still play them on your puter, just open them up and play them in winamp/foobar/windows media player.

[T.J.]

hmm, i've never burned audio files to a dvd before other then when i make a dvd-a.  but thats a totally different process.

I'm not for sure, but that might be a problem.  I would think that if you burned the wav's as data files, you wouldn't have the problem anymore.  if the files are data files, you can still play them on your puter, just open them up and play them in winamp/foobar/windows media player.

thanks ed. +t question: if you burn your masters on a dvd-r as a data file, can it still be opened in programs like cd wave and wavelab 5.0? i am trying to figure out what i will be saving for archival purposes. right now i would like to save:
1. wav files of masters untouched
2. flac files tracked/edited
3. other stuff: txt files, ffp, metadata, md5 for flac

i guess i could flac the masters and save them, but i'd rather have the master files w/o compression   

[Ed.]

yep, if you burn them as a data file you can still open them in cd wave and wavelab.  instead of having an audio file, you'll have a data file, just like the one that used to be on the pc hard drive, only it'll be stored on the dvd-r.

I usually make a single dvd-r for a night out, and on it, i'll put the master wav file, the 24bit flacs, the 16bit flacs, sometimes mp3s too, and all the info files and md5's for that disc and an info file about the night, where i sat up in the club/venue, and all the minor details.

[tapeworm48]

i installed my NEC on a dell as well, no issues.  so far, only burned two dvd+r discs as data.  the one burned in nero didnt work anywhere, really strange.  then i burned the same files using Roxio, and it worked fine. 

and FWIW, i'll burn the original wav files on 1 disc with multiple other shows on my HD, txt files and all that good stuff.  then i'll also burn FLACs on another dvd.  this way if 1 disc is damaged, i dont lose the entire gig and i'll have it available in some format elsewhere. 

[Ed.]

yeah, i should clarify, i make multiple backups, but the main backup is the disc with everything on it for the night.

[pfife]

but i'd rather have the master files w/o compression   

wise move.