Terrible Luck with Smart & Friendly ROM Burner

[Harold of the Rocks]

Good People of this Forum,

I am here because I have a Smart & Friendly ROM burner, the Speedwriter Plus, which in my opinion, is a piece of junk. I have no problem in duping ROMs, but my main forte is copying music from DAT to hard drive and then editing the file and burning the ROM. With that process, my burner loads each ROM with tons of skips. I don't burn coasters, but what I do burn usually has so many skips in it, it's not worth the trouble.

I have contacted Smart & Friendly and they are virtually impossible to reach by phone. I sent in an online tech support request with explicit detail as to my problem. 7 days later I get a 2 sentence reply that had virtually nothing to do with my original complaint. As far as I'm concerned, I'm out $400. So, I am here to tell you that if you are considering a Smart & Friendly ROM burner, I would really reconsider. They have been unresponsive and their product just doesn't work. Tell your friends... Smart and Friendly is dumb and hostile.

[Target]

Harold...thats a bummer you are having issues.

Got to ask though, do you take the time to defrag the hard disk that the sound files reside on before burning? If not, you can try that to see if it helps. Might not hurt either to disable any anti-virus progs you have that might be scanning the file as you burn. Slowing down the burn speed might help, if your software allows you to do so, and using the machine exclusively to burn (ie: no other puter use happening) may help.

Am sure there are other possible causes for the issue you are experiencing. I remember seeing a write-up somewhere about it and will try to find it for you.

[Target]

This may not apply to you, but I pulled this off of the Adaptec support site as I use their SCSI controllers and mastering software.

Give it a read and see if this helps.
http://ask.adaptec.com/cgi-bin/tic/solution?11=990416-0011&130=924286201&14=7&2715=&15=4&2716=&57=faq&58=

[Harold of the Rocks]

Target,

Thank you very much for trying. I definitely close everything that runs in the background... all the icons on my task bar, and all my TSRs. I have been burning at a slower rate, 2X, but that doesn't help. Plus, if everyone else who pays $200 for an IDE ROM burner can burn at 4X with no problems, then why can't I with my $400 SCSI burner. Thats why I went SCSI, to avoid errors.

Again, I am not burning from ROM to ROM. My original files are live music DAT files which I transfer digitally to my hard drive via and SPDIF port in my Soundblaster Live! card. The software I'm using to transfer the data from the DAT player to the hard drive is Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge. The software I'm using to burn the ROM is Sonic Foundry's CD Architect. Supposedly, this is the best software out there to do this application. I honestly believe I have a bad burner and Smart & Friendly is doing NOTHING to rectify the situation. They seem to feel that since I have no problems when I do go from ROM to ROM, that their burner is working well. It's not... it's a piece of junk.

Again, thank you for trying to help me.