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3/14/00
- By, Marco
?BigWop? Chiappetta
I?ve
been around PC hardware for quite a while and
have used just about every ?speed? CD-ROM
since my trusty
ol? Creative Labs 1X. Having used all
these different drives I?ve learned a couple
things: 1.) The speed on the box is
usually not what you should expect and 2.)
One company?s 50x is another?s 20x!
With
that being said, I introduce to you the Shuttle
56x CD-ROM.
Is it really a 56x Drive?
Let?s find out. I?m not going
to go too deeply into the specs of this drive,
as they are very similar to just about any mid
to high end drive out there, but these are a few
of the more prominent features.
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| SD-561
Specifications / Features |
| Straight-up
56X |
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Maximum
8400KB/sec. data transfer rate
-
Front
Panel with Play/Skip & Stop/Eject
buttons, volume control and headphone jack
-
ATAPI
Enhanced IDE Interface (PIO mode-4,
Multi-word DMA mode-2 and Ultra DMA/33)
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Access
Time: 80ms
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Supports:
Audio CDs, CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA, Photo CD,
Karaoke CD, Video CD, CD-I, CD-R,CD-RW, CD+
and I-Trax
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MBTF
(Mean Time Between Failure) Longevity 50,000
hours
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Motorized
Easy-Touch Loading
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Vertical/Horizontal
Mount Capable
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MPC
level 3 compliant
-
ISO-9660
standard compliant
Initial
Impression:
My
initial impression of this drive was very good.
From the second I removed it from the
box, it had a sturdy ?feel? to it.
The drive was relatively heavy and didn?t
feel like it had any ?loose? parts floating
around inside.
I don?t mean broken parts, but ?loose?
parts. If
you?ve ever lightly shaken a CD-ROM drive with
it?s laser mechanism loosely mounted on rubber
grommets you know what I mean.
Even the drive?s physical appearance
was cool. Not too flashy or weird looking, just a simple ?56x?
designation and the control layout was very
good. The
buttons have a firm feel with a tactile click.
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| Installation
/ Setup |
| No
surprises with the SD-561 |
|
Installation
of this drive (or just about any IDE CD Drive
for that matter) is very simple, and went
without a hitch.
All there really is to do is set a single
jumper on the rear designating whether or not
the drive will be a Master or Slave on the
channel, and plugging it into one of your
motherboards IDE ports.
Just for the record, this drive was set
to Master on the Secondary IDE port of my
motherboard (VIA133a based) and was alone on the
cable.
The
drive comes with a DOS driver installation
floppy, if you?re setting up your PC for the
first time and haven?t installed Windows yet,
mounting screws and also a standard MPC CD Audio
cable. If
you?re just replacing a current CD-ROM and
Windows is already installed, the drive will
automatically be found.
The only setting you?ll want to change
is to enable DMA in device manager.
Noise
Level, Spin-Up, Sound Quality:
Most
new high speed CD-Rom drives (40x +) sound like
a turbine firing up when they spin at their
maximum speed.
I?m happy to report that, although
there is a very noticeable sound emitted from
this drive, it was actually relatively quiet
compared to some other lesser quality drives I?ve
installed and worked with.
This drive was less noisy than a generic
48x drive I have here that?s installed in a
customer?s personal system.
Spin-Up
time is not a strong point for this drive.
From the time a CD is inserted until you
hear the drive spin-up there is about a 1 ? 2
second delay.
This is by no means a killer for the
drive. I?ve seen worse but I?m use to
my SCSI Plextor drive that starts churning
almost immediately.
I
also played a few audio disks just to hear the
sound quality.
I did not hear any noticeable distortion
and highs were crisp.
People who like to play music while
surfing will not have any problems with this
drive.
Performance,
that's what it's all about...
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