There was some discussion on the size of the new CD. Phillips wanted 11.5 centimeters with 60 minutes of playing time, Sony wanted a 12 centimeter CD with 74 minutes playing time. For whatever reason, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, one of the longest playing pieces at 74 minutes, may have been the deciding factor on establishing a 74 minute CD. Whatever. It only took about 7 or 8 years to tweak that up to 80 minutes, pretty much the red laser standard right now. I know 99 minute CDs are available, but if you want to screw-up a CD player, play one of those or an overburned CD. And the quality of the CD-R has constantly increased, while the price, which was at one dollar each when I started burning coasters, has steadily gone down to 5 to 10 cents each on sale. What a deal! So let’s wish Sony and Phillips a happy birthday. May you live long and prosper, and since they still get a royalty fee on every CD, I’m sure they will.

Phillips, never one to sit on their hands, has demonstrated a prototype of their new blue laser miniature disc drive that uses a 3 centimeter disc (CD is 12 CM) that can store 1 gigabyte of data. The Blu-ray Disc Founders group (Phillips is a member) is also working on a blue-laser format for standard sized CDs that will increase their capacity to 27 gigabytes. Bring it on!

There seems to be some confusion among new burner buyers. If you have an over two year old computing rig and buy a new 48X burner, the odds of you winning the lottery are better than you burning a two minute CD. Remember, the 48X is the maximum burning speed, not the average for the whole burn. The burn will start at a slower speed and increase to the maximum on the outer edge of the CD. But that is not the limiting factor for the two minute burn in most computing rigs. Let’s take a look at the things that really influence burning speed. Start with the a good computer power supply. A good clean 300 watts is a minimum if you are running an AMD 1 GHz or faster CPU. Memory is important. It can preclude Windows having to swap information to the hard drive, which saves time. My guess somewhere around 400 MB is about the maximum useful amount for burning. However, if you do like I do and have a bunch of stuff running in the background, you may use more. I choose not to do a clean boot when burning so I have to live with 16X burns with a 24X burner. A five and a half minute burn for an 80 minute audio CD is OK with me.

Next, take a look at your motherboard (MOBO). Actually the chipset that controls DMA or busmaster is a really important speed factor. When you check DMA in the control panel, your data bypasses the CPU, saving time refilling buffers. Next, a fast hard drive is critical to a fast burn. Most drive makers brag about access time [how fast it can read the file allocation table (FAT) and locate the data, ready to read] when thoughtput (how fast the data flows) is more important to burning a CD. A 7,200 RPM drive is almost always faster than a 5,400 RPM drive and Ultra-DMA 33, 66, or 100 will really kick the data along. For an IDE setup, the boot hard drive will always be primary-master. I have found hooking up the burner as secondary-slave works best for me. And what burner do I think is best? I used to think Plextor was the best, but after their 12X burner, they have been overtaken in everything except, maybe endurance. I have a LiteOn 24X and I couldn’t ask for a better all around burner. Not the fastest. ASUS, LG, and in some models, Yamaha, are all faster. Since I also have a 16X Yamaha that I have learned to dislike intently, I wouldn’t recommend Yamaha to anyone.

Software is equally important to a fast burn. I haven’t found a test of operating systems influencing burn speed yet. Most testers of fast burners tend to use Windows 2,000 (I suspect that is because they are also big-time gamers). I will continue to use Windows 98SE for the time being so I can use the alternate CD file system. System Commander has found a home on my rig, it allows me multi-boot control over several operating systems. Installing Windows, your burner software, and the Windows swap file in the same partition is highly recommended. Don’t forget to defragment that partition on a regular basis. I use monthly. Burner software will have a big influence on burning speed. For music, I use Feurio for speed and it has a great wav editor, and DART4 for great sound and ease of use. For all types of burning, You can’t beat Nero. They update it regularly and it doesn’t choke on the light forms of copy protection like Easy CD Creator and WindowsXP. For data, accuracy, not speed is the first priority. Error correction tends to slow a data burn, as it should. I still use DirectCD for packet writing and rewrite burns are now up to 24X on the new drives. The price of 10X CD-RWs has come down to about $1.00 each making it a great reusable data backup system.

The bottom line is all the components of your computer rig must work together to provide an uninterrupted flow of data at the same speed as you set for the burn speed in the software. Sure, you can set the burn speed to 24, 32, 40, or 48X if it makes you feel better, and with buffer underrun protection, the burn will take longer while it starts and stops waiting for the buffers to refill. Without (BURN-proof, SMART-burn, etc) you will burn a coaster, but I wouldn’t buy a new burner without buffer underrun prevention. At 16X, your rig must provide a sustained data flow of 2.75 megabytes per second (16 X 172 Kilobytes per second = 2,752 KB/s). At 48X, the data flow must be 8.26 megabytes per second. Not an easy task even for a new computer with everything optimized. Fortunately, most of the better burner software will test the actual data flow your rig will sustain. That is the burn speed you use, not what is advertised for the burner. For high speed burns, the blank media quality has become more critical. The better drives will test the media before the burn to make sure it can handle the high speed. Have fun.

Ready to get serious about learning about copy protection? One of the best primers I’ve found is at Tom's Hardware, titled Mysteries of the CDRW and Back Ups Revealed. It explains how the different copy protection schemes work, uses Clony XXL to identify what copy protection is actually on the disc, and how to set-up CloneCD to make that archival copy of the protected CD. Then they burn a copy of each CD with one of the four copy schemes on four different new burners.  A really good tool if you are having trouble making a copy of a CD. Also, check out Toms Hardware Guide and sign up for his weekly newsletter. It’s up-to-the-minute info and they do real testing of computer hardware.

Waitec announces Frisby II, the fastest external CD-RW. It’s a 40x12x40x external drive that supprots FireWire or USB2. They claim up to 33 MB/s in UDMA 33, mode 2. That’s Hot, and I love the name.

Here we go again. Toshiba has decided to use a different standard from the Blu-Ray Disc Founders Group standard. Toshiba plans to apply the partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) signal detection process and multi-layer in order to attain the higher data recording capacity of 30 gigabytes on one disc using double layers with 18 to 20 GB on single-sided, single layer playback only media. The rewriteable media is expected to hold around 15 GB. Their system does not require a disc caddy to hold the media. We’re talken’ 2003 (best case) before we see these drives on the shelves. Gonna make it tough for player makers since the systems are not compatible. There’s still some big dogs to be heard from yet. Stay tuned.

I see where Mitsui announced a new CD-R media using their patented phthtalocyanine and rated at 48X recording speed. They estimate the lifetime of these discs at over 300 years! Yeah sure. Anyway, none of us will be around to verify that claim.

The latest device touted as the replacement for the venerable PC floppy drive is the SanDisk Cruzer, a USB “Key chain” take-along storage device that uses memory cards from 32 to 256 megabytes. Priced from $50 to $200, you can take your data with you in your shirt pocket. Your data is protected by encoding to your device and a password. At your destination, just plug it into the USB port of any Mac or PC and do your thing. The 128 MB model is expected to sell for about $100. Personally, I like the small 80 mm CD that holds about 185 MBs and cost about $2.00, and is rewriteable. But what do I know about being cool.

Something to get excited about. LiteOn, my favorite drive maker, plans in September to sell the LTR-52326S CD-RW drive that used full CAV speed control. This is a 52X recording, 32X rewriting, and 52X reading speed. Speed phreaks rejoice! Their just released LTR-48246S 48X24X48X has been tested as a great do-everything drive that beats the pants off the high priced burners. I only have a puny little 24X LiteOn burner, but I love it. No single computer component in all my experience, has given me more pure pleasure and performance than my LiteOn burner. You can bet, I’ll be saving my coins waiting for the price drop. Can the 60x be far behind?

Roxio announced a new upgrade for the Easy CD Creator5 Platinum software to 5.1 in March 2002. The new upgrade provides support for DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and DVD+RW. Since their stock took a 46% loss the week of 26 June, I guess they decided to reach out to the early adaptor DVD crowd. Looks like Nero is taking a big bite out of their overseas dominance.

Have you heard the latest in the efforts to kill peer-to-peer (P2P) on the internet? Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif whose district includes Hollywood, said that copyright owners need new legal protections to combat online piracy. Seems like the greedy, multi-billionaire entertainment industry wants the laws changed so they can legally wage cyber-war on the internet. They worry some of their “high-tech techniques for stopping online file traders might be illegal under anti-hacking laws.” And what does Rep. Berman want to “make legal” according to John Borland in a ZDNet article, “Lawmaker: Let studios hack P2P sites”

• Interdiction, in which a copyright owner floods a file swapper with false requests so that downloads can't get through;
• Redirection, in which a file swapper might be pointed to a site that doesn't actually have the files they're looking for;
• And spoofing, in which a corrupt or otherwise undesirable file masquerades as a song, movie or other file that people are seeking.

It should be noted that Rep. Berman would stop short of allowing damage to a file-swapper’s computer or spread viruses. Sounds to me like an open challenge to all script-kiddies, hackers, and crackers to wage all-out war on the entertainment industry if this legislation is passed. If it’s OK for the entertainment industry to befuddle the net, it must be OK for everyone to mess-up the net. Maybe, that is what they had in mind all along. An interesting application of chaos theory.

Burning tip of the month
Got a favorite CD that is getting temperamental and starting to go bad and you can’t get a good copy? Go to BlindWrite and download a free full function 30 day copy of Blindwrite suite Ver.4.0.5.40 that includes the latest Blindread and Blindwrite. Remember to clean the face of the CD you want to copy with a little rubbing alcohol on a clean, soft rag. If that still doesn’t work, try it in your friends newer burner. A good manual with a lot of good info is included with the download so please, read the instructions.

Alamo PC has also seen his other skills come forward with the move to the Computer Learning Center in Crossroads Mall, doing some highly skilled work and the finish work on the walls at the new location, skills learned during the years and had lived in military housing that always needed remodeling. Dale spent over 30 years in the Army as a helicopter pilot. He enjoyed the challenge of Army life, the variety of living places, and the foods of other cultures. He retired from the Army 14 years ago.