DVD drive

[terry648]

I was looking on replacing my cd-rom drive with a dvd drive. Is there anything special or unusual I need to be aware of. Do I need a decoder card? I have an asus p5a mobo. I am assuming that I use the same cable that I use with the cdrom. Any help would be appreciated. My cpu is a k6-2/333. If I keep my cdrom and add a dvdrom with my cdrw that gives me three devices. How do I set the jmpers master/slave.

[LostBok]

Most DVD's don't need anything over a UDMA33 interface, so you should be fine with the same old cable you had for your CD.

What CPU and graphics card do you have? That will determine if you need a decoder card... unlikely though - usually you'd be better off just getting a new graphics card / CPU anyway - better all-round investment.

Make sure you've got recent DMA capable ?IDE drivers for your motherboard, and then enable DMA on the DVD drive in Device Manager once you've installed it.

I'd recommend getting a region free DVD - allows you to buy DVD's from the US, Europe, SE Asia, or Japan (good if you're into manga).... if you're just into popcorn movies and won't be buying any films from different countries - i.e. won't be needing the region free thing, don't stress - I know loads of people that never need to change it off region 1 (US) as that's where they get all their films from.

Another recommendation would be for a slot loader... I've got an old 6x Pioneer SCSI DVD slot loader in my main entertainment system, but Pioneer do a 16x IDE slot loader too, not sure if its region free though...

Don't get too too duped by speeds on the players though... rather go for quality than speed... it's not like you're going to need to watch the film any faster, is it?? 2x DVD apparently provides the data quick enough for films, 4x/5x are about the slowest you can readilly buy these days, although some of these older ones have problems reading CDR's and CDRW's. Although my old 6x doesn't have any such probs and I doubt you'd be ABLE to buy anything slower than that 2nd hand, let alone new!

Be warned - you will often have problems copying from DVD to CD, so you might consider keeping a CD ROM in the case if you do any CD copying...

laters,
LostBok

[arthur888]

The dvd drive will use the exact same cable and master/slave setting as your cdrom player. For DVD ROM everything's ok but your CPU is a little too slow for software DVD VIDEO (mpeg2) decoding. You have 2 options here: you can buy a decoder card (expensive) or upgrade your cpu to 400 mhz or higher (I know your p5a mobo supports it) which is a lot cheaper. You can get a K6/II 450 or faster cpu under $40 or even cheaper. Your mobo supports up to 500mhz I think. Further there should be no problem. Hope this helps,

Arthur

[terry648]

Thanks for the info. Now this gives me on more question. If I will have a cdrw, cdrom and dvdrom how do I set the jumpers so they all work?

[arthur888]

One IDE channel supports only 2 devices so you will need to set one of these drives at an other channel. Maybe the channel your harddrive is on has one free place. On one channel there should always be a master and a slave. You can set this with the jumpers on the backside of the HD or cdrom/dvd/cdrw, the settings are usually printed on the top side of the drive. It is recommended to set your HD master on the primary channel (probably already done) with the cdrom or dvd as a slave. The secondary IDE channel with the RW as master and cdrom or dvd as slave. Good luck,

Arthur

[mondayz]

I recommend a faster cpu for dvd video playback than Arthur888 suggests. My 500k62 with matrox g450 played with some jerkiness during some complex scenes. My 950tbird with the same matrox card runs smoothly through everything I've viewed so far. I have come to distrust minimum requirements in general. Low minimum requirements certainly broadens the sales base for the manufacturer. I am curious to know if others enjoy smooth dvd video playback with lower processor speeds.

[arthur888]

I understand your distrust but on my k6-II 400 everything runs smoothly with a TNT1 graphics card and 64mb of memory. Maybe I'm just very lucky:)