[ILUG] CDRW drive: recommendations?

[Vincent Cunniffe]

Ronan Cunniffe wrote:
> Quoting Niall O Broin <niall at linux.ie>:
> 
> 
>>On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 11:41:25PM +0000, Paul Kelly wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>If I buy a CDRW drive from Dell should I expect difficulties in getting
>>>>it to work with Linux. (RH7.0)
>>>>
>>>You'll almost certainly be fine. However bear in mind that SCSI burners 
>>>are worth double the price premium on them, and then some.
>>>
>>SCSI burners are undoubtedly better, but getting one may be an issue, and
>>
> 
> Ok, I'll bite.  Can someone please explain why and how real SCSI is "better" 
> than ATAPI for CD/R/RW drives?  Oh, and please avoid mystical enthusiasm for 
> the architectural glory that is SCSI. :-)

1. A SCSI burner takes almost no CPU usage to write a CD. An IDE one does
    take a significant amount of CPU, and also shares critical kernel paths
    with other (blocking) IDE devices. On Windows kernels up to Win ME, try
    inserting a floppy disk into the drive while burning an IDE CD-R. Coaster.

2. SCSI -> SCSI burning requires very, very little intervention from the
    CPU at all, again useful on a loaded system.

3. Personal experience : I have never, ever, managed a coaster on a SCSI
    burner, I have managed a few on IDE ones, always due to timeouts.

Basically, if you are willing to start burning a CD and then remove your
hards from the keyboard for 15-20 mins, cool. If you want to spend an afternoon
burning CD's while playing Quake 3, get SCSI or a *lot* of spare blanks.

Whatever the architectural claims of ATAPI are, the fact is that under load
it thrashes like a flaming weasel on every OS, and SCSI doesn't ;-)

Vin