DVD burner for older pc

[eagle777]

I need any recomendations or suggestions for installing a DVD burner in an older pc.
My broher-in laws CD burner went out in his pc and he wants me to help him install a DVD burner. His computer his about 4 years old, has a Soyo MB with 512k memory and an AMD 800Mhz proccessor. He' running Win XP Home. My question is can i install any DVD burner he wants or are there power and CPU speed requirements? Any help is greatly appreciated.

[RJ]

Hi,

you can install any DVD burner, there are no CPU speed requirements (burner burns on its own, it doesn't need the CPU).

The only requirement for a successful burn is that the DVD burner can receive the data fast enough. If your hard drive or IDE bus system can't provide the data fast enough, the burner has to constantly pause which is not so good.

Depending on the PC he has it is probably necessary that the DVD be burned at a slower speed.

When I've had my PIII 800 I had a burner which could only burn 2,4x. Now I have a 16x burner but I still use only 4x.

Your brother-in-law's PC should be able to handle 4x burning without problems. Just make sure that hard drive and DVD burner are on different IDE channels, and that DMA is enabled (which is the default setting for XP).
Maybe you can even burn at 8x or 16x, just try.

RJ

[eagle777]

Thanks for your help. Now it's up to him to decide what to do. Thanks again.

[inflames988]

i did the same thing with my old computer. i was rocking a 200mhz pentium (yes, you heard right, no II, III, or 4 behind the pentium), and i could burn CD's. i had a 52x burner but burned at 2-4x lol...just keep the speed slow enough so your burner doesnt turn out coasters.

[chuck4456]

I did the same thing with an old 600mhz PIII system. The problem that I had was that it took so long to do a burn that the CD Burner would get hot and take pauses - thus - ruining it all. It was a Lite-on burner, so you know that it had to really heat up to do that.

[inflames988]

Originally Posted by chuck4456 I did the same thing with an old 600mhz PIII system. The problem that I had was that it took so long to do a burn that the CD Burner would get hot and take pauses - thus - ruining it all. It was a Lite-on burner, so you know that it had to really heat up to do that.

lite-ons are awesome, ill never buy anything else

[glc]

My 600 MHz P3 system burned CD's at 24x with no problem.