PLEXTOR

[alpha_man]

I know that plextor cd-writers are good, and mine certainly lives up to it, but are plextor cd-roms any good?

[1000hours]

In my opinion, yes they are excellent! Also, correct me if i'm wrong because i haven't checked in a while, but i believe they are the only manufacturer that makes an ultra-wide scsi cdrom. The UltraPlex Wide, which is what I use. Super fast. They make some excellent drives for fast and reliable audio extraction also.

[vfrxsw]

machine.

[NDC]

I agree that Plextor makes good SCSI CDROM drives. That's where they got their reputation from... However, using a few of their IDE CDRW drives, I think they live up to their name...

[otheos]

Plextor builds good drives. On the CDRom front, they were the first to build a high quality and speed DAE drive, and a firmware flashable one (at the same time). The UltraPlex 40MAX when it was out it was THE CDRom to have. Nowadays the competition from IDE manufacturers is really strong. Unless you ABSOLUTELY need to have a SCSI CDRom go for an IDE drive. New drives from Aopen, Asus, Affrey give high speed DAE (>18x) rendering the advantage of the Ultraplex somewhat... common. Stay away from "branded" low quality drives (aka Creative), and make sure you read around before you buy.

If you really want an Ultraplex (I wouldn't blame you, I got one, I know what it's like) take note of the following:

The Ultraplex comes in two flavors. The 1.0x firmware version and the 1.1x version. The former CANNOT be updated to the latter. Differences? Night and Day! The 1.0x is limited to 16-24x DAE, had a lot of spin down problems and generally was a drive hated by many (included myself). The 1.1x version can DAE 19-42x, and is absolutely marvelous. I recently sold my 1.0x to buy a 1.1x. Make sure you are buying the 1.1x (not the case at Ebay!). The wide model is still based on the 1.0x model so I would strongly advised against it. If you need the 68pin, get a 50-68 convertor for exactly the price difference between the Ultra and the Wide, and you have a better drive.

All the best.

[alpha_man]

thanks all for that help. i had heard about the 1.0x versions but not that much. thanks.