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Adding DVD
Pentium IV running XP home. Is there any way to add an external drive
for DVD capability, etc.? (Microsoft Flight Simulator needs a DVD drive.) |
#2
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Adding DVD
On 4/23/2011 11:53 AM, Steve Giannoni wrote:
Pentium IV running XP home. Is there any way to add an external drive for DVD capability, etc.? (Microsoft Flight Simulator needs a DVD drive.) That depends. Does your computer have an available USB2 port? Do you have $40 or thereabouts to buy one of the ubiquitous drives? (try googling for 'external dvd drive') Are you up to plugging the drive in and possibly installing a driver? If you can answer yes to all three of these then it should certainly be possible. You should know that you will never get top performance from an external. For most applications I'd suggest that someone with a computer which will support one install an internal drive which is both cheaper and better-performing but loads of people who own skinny laptops and netbooks are getting along with external drives for lightweight applications (no fast burning of huge data files and the like) so gameplaying will probably work just fine. |
#3
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Adding DVD
On 4/23/2011 11:30 AM, John McGaw wrote:
On 4/23/2011 11:53 AM, Steve Giannoni wrote: Pentium IV running XP home. Is there any way to add an external drive for DVD capability, etc.? (Microsoft Flight Simulator needs a DVD drive.) That depends. Does your computer have an available USB2 port? Do you have $40 or thereabouts to buy one of the ubiquitous drives? (try googling for 'external dvd drive') Are you up to plugging the drive in and possibly installing a driver? If you can answer yes to all three of these then it should certainly be possible. You should know that you will never get top performance from an external. For most applications I'd suggest that someone with a computer which will support one install an internal drive which is both cheaper and better-performing but loads of people who own skinny laptops and netbooks are getting along with external drives for lightweight applications (no fast burning of huge data files and the like) so gameplaying will probably work just fine. I concur, and will go a bit further. If we're talking about a desktop computer, simply replace whatever drive you have with a DVD burner. You can get them for about $20-30, depending on interface, and it will do everything you need it to do. |
#4
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Adding DVD
How would I know if the free USB port is USB2 ?
On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 12:30:25 -0400, John McGaw wrote: On 4/23/2011 11:53 AM, Steve Giannoni wrote: Pentium IV running XP home. Is there any way to add an external drive for DVD capability, etc.? (Microsoft Flight Simulator needs a DVD drive.) That depends. Does your computer have an available USB2 port? Do you have $40 or thereabouts to buy one of the ubiquitous drives? (try googling for 'external dvd drive') Are you up to plugging the drive in and possibly installing a driver? If you can answer yes to all three of these then it should certainly be possible. You should know that you will never get top performance from an external. For most applications I'd suggest that someone with a computer which will support one install an internal drive which is both cheaper and better-performing but loads of people who own skinny laptops and netbooks are getting along with external drives for lightweight applications (no fast burning of huge data files and the like) so gameplaying will probably work just fine. |
#5
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Adding DVD
"Steve Giannoni" wrote in message ... How would I know if the free USB port is USB2 ? Go to the Control Panel, Click on the System folder, hardware tab then Device Manager, and scroll down to look for Universal Serial Bus Contollers. Expand that selection and look for "Enhanced Host Controller" or USB2 Enhanced Host Controller. If you see it you got it. If you don't see the word "Enhanced" anywhere you don't have USB 2 on that computer. -- Jan Alter |
#6
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Adding DVD
Steve Giannoni wrote:
Pentium IV running XP home. Is there any way to add an external drive for DVD capability, etc.? (Microsoft Flight Simulator needs a DVD drive.) I use a USB2 based enclosure for a DVD drive, and it works. The only time it doesn't work, is if you use really ancient software, that doesn't know about USB optical drives. For example, really old versions of Nero, can't find a USB optical drive. (Nero is for burning CDs or DVDs.) Another failure scenario, is certain free OS install situations, will refuse to install from a USB drive. I think out of a stack of OS installer CDs, two have failed to work from USB. The disc boots OK, but the installer starts claiming there is "no optical drive", when the damn software printing the message loaded off the drive. To deal with those, I had to move the drive from the enclosure, inside the PC temporarily, to finish the job. Booting and installing then, was seamless. So while the external USB2 optical drive will work a lot of the time, if enough "old" items are involved, it might not be everything you'd like it to be. You can put together your own external enclosure. Some brands of enclosures, seem to have problems with the quality of the power adapter, which is why you check the reviews for enclosures before buying them. This one has several interfaces on the back (you use one interface at a time, not all of them). You can install a ~$20 SATA optical drive in the enclosure yourself with a screwdriver. By using a regular 5.25" desktop drive, you get tray style disc loading. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145064 This is an example of a 5.25" drive mechanism to place in the enclosure. This is an OEM drive, with no accessories in the box and no included software. Sometimes, a "retail" drive will include a copy of Nero so you can burn CDs and DVDs. You can always use Imgburn as a software instead, which is free and can be downloaded off the net. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106289 Optical drives would have two interfaces on them, IDE (ribbon cable) and SATA. IDE ribbon cable is the older standard. Make sure the drive mechanism, and the enclosure, share the same interface standard before buying them and engaging your screwdriver. I use the external enclosure concept, to aid some of my older systems that still have CD-only drives in them. My enclosure is IDE, and the drive mechanism is IDE. (External interface is USB2.) I can also remove the optical drive, and install 3.5" IDE hard drives in the enclosure. So I have used the enclosure for more than one purpose. In terms of "boot capability", I have two P4 systems here. The old system (FSB400 processor) cannot boot from a USB drive of any sort. (This is a BIOS limitation - it is missing a USB code module.) But I can still use the enclosure after the system is booted, as OS detection of USB drives is a separate issue from how the BIOS works. The other P4 system (FSB800) can boot from the enclosure, so I can run a Linux LiveCD from the external enclosure. Pre-built "slim" enclosures exist too, but the mechanism to hold the disc in place will differ. Tray load discs, you just lower the disc into the open tray, and the drive takes care of securing it. Expanding hub style "slim" trays, such as those found in laptops, rely on the user pushing the disc onto an expanding center hub, and that secures the disc. There are also "slot load" optical drives, which seem to operate in more than one orientation, but I've never used one of those (and wouldn't buy one if they were offered). I'm a "tray" fan, having had troubles with at least one "expanding hub" style drive. Some expanding hub style drives, need excessive install force. The one on my laptop isn't bad, but a previous one I used was a bear to use (I hated that one). Another feature I hadn't noticed until recently, is the current optical drives accept "mini" discs. In my tray mount drives here, there is a circular indentation the size of a mini disc, and that allows mini discs to be used. Mini discs typically come with new hardware, like a driver disc for the hardware. I was expecting trouble, the first time I used the mini disc, but the drive worked with it with no problems. As long as USB2 mode is working properly, there should be plenty of bandwidth for data transfer (USB2 mass storage protocol gives around 30MB/sec or a bit more). When burning DVDs, you may not be able to get media that goes as high as the entries in the table here (I see 16x for sale). And various "burn proof" type features, prevent data underruns if the cable happened to be too slow. I got proof of this one day, when my computer magically reverted to USB 1.1 mode, and I was burning a DVD dual layer disc at the time. The predicted completion time for the burn was measured in hours, but the burner was quite happily running in "stop-start" mode to get the job done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd Drive speed (Mbit/s) (MB/s) (MiB/s) 1x 10.80 1.35 1.29 .... 20x 216.00 27.00 25.75 22x 237.60 29.70 28.32 24x 259.20 32.40 30.90 So if there was actually 24x media available to use, the burn-proof might cut in if you were burning a disc. You can check here, to see how proof of USB2 mode can be obtained. http://www.usbman.com/Guides/checking_for_usb_2.htm Paul |
#7
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Adding DVD
I've got :
Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2442 Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2444 Iomega USB Bus Powered Zip 250 NEC PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller (B1) NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub 11 items and only one says "Enhanced" Comments ? ... On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:13:03 -0400, "Jan Alter" wrote: "Steve Giannoni" wrote in message .. . How would I know if the free USB port is USB2 ? Go to the Control Panel, Click on the System folder, hardware tab then Device Manager, and scroll down to look for Universal Serial Bus Contollers. Expand that selection and look for "Enhanced Host Controller" or USB2 Enhanced Host Controller. If you see it you got it. If you don't see the word "Enhanced" anywhere you don't have USB 2 on that computer. |
#8
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Adding DVD
On 04/23/2011 02:21 PM, Steve Giannoni wrote:
I've got : Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2442 Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2444 Iomega USB Bus Powered Zip 250 NEC PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller (B1) NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub 11 items and only one says "Enhanced" Comments ? ... On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:13:03 -0400, "Jan wrote: "Steve wrote in message ... How would I know if the free USB port is USB2 ? Go to the Control Panel, Click on the System folder, hardware tab then Device Manager, and scroll down to look for Universal Serial Bus Contollers. Expand that selection and look for "Enhanced Host Controller" or USB2 Enhanced Host Controller. If you see it you got it. If you don't see the word "Enhanced" anywhere you don't have USB 2 on that computer. You are all set one of these in the $30+ range should do the job http://www.newegg.com/store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=420&Tpk=external%20dv d%20drive|dvd%20drive|external%20dvd |
#9
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Adding DVD
Steve Giannoni wrote: Pentium IV running XP home. Is there any way to add an external drive for DVD capability, etc.? (Microsoft Flight Simulator needs a DVD drive.) If your mobo doesn't have USB 2.0 hardware, get a PCI USB 2.0 card based on either an NEC or VIA brand chip. Do you have room for an internal DVD drive? PATA (parallel) IDE DVD drives are harder to find but still available. Newegg sells them for $30, delivered: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CE&PageSize=20 If your mobo doesn't have SATA ports, you probably want a PATA DVD drive because PCI SATA controller cards don't support optical drives very well at all. Oddly, USB DVD drives seem to work better in this case. |
#10
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Adding DVD
Steve Giannoni wrote:
I've got : Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2442 Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2444 Iomega USB Bus Powered Zip 250 NEC PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller (B1) NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub USB Root Hub 11 items and only one says "Enhanced" Comments ? ... I would agree with Philo. You're good to go. I would add a small caveat though. Your motherboard is possibly a "crossover" board. USB2 existed at that time, but it was not available immediately from Intel. Your Southbridge chip is ICH2, and USB2 was introduced with ICH4 Southbridge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I/O_Controller_Hub To help out, some motherboard manufacturers added the NEC USB2 chip. This is similar to the situation today, where NEC did the USB3 host, before it was available on chipsets. Back in the day, a NEC USB2 chip was one of the first to host USB2 ports. A motherboard manufacturer, wishing to add USB2 to the feature list, would include a NEC chip on the motherboard, to take up the slack from the missing feature on the Intel chipset. When you look at the USB ports on the computer, some will be connected to the NEC chip, and some will be connected to the Intel ICH2. For best performance, you'll want to use the NEC connector. This may be addressed in the documentation for the computer. (They wouldn't think of actually labeling them. For today's USB3, the connector color is used as a hint. But back then, nada.) A USB 1.1 connection will manage about 1 MB/sec transfer rate. An external USB2 enclosure on a USB2 connection will manage slightly better than 30MB/sec (versus the 60MB/sec promised by the bit rate on the cable, which is never achieved in practice). It's possible to use a program like UVCView, to evaluate what kind of connection was negotiated. But it's a pain to find a copy of UVCView, and a nuisance to describe how to interpret the config data in the right hand pane. The Device Manager, as far as I know, doesn't show the present connection speed. But you may get a dialog box presented by the OS at some point, telling you that additional performance could be achieved if you connect to a USB2 port. You may have to rely on that, to distinguish one port from another. I seem to remember one Asus board, may have mixed a NEC connector and an Intel connector on the same "stack" on the back of the computer. So you can't even rely on the stack arrangement, to pair together "like" things. Paul On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:13:03 -0400, "Jan Alter" wrote: "Steve Giannoni" wrote in message ... How would I know if the free USB port is USB2 ? Go to the Control Panel, Click on the System folder, hardware tab then Device Manager, and scroll down to look for Universal Serial Bus Contollers. Expand that selection and look for "Enhanced Host Controller" or USB2 Enhanced Host Controller. If you see it you got it. If you don't see the word "Enhanced" anywhere you don't have USB 2 on that computer. |
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