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By
- Marco
"BigWop" Chiappetta
8 / 24 / 2000
Shuttle,
along with many other companies generally
recognized as motherboard manufacturers,
actually has a very diverse product line. They
offer everything from CD-ROM drives to Video
cards and a wide variety of motherboards for
almost any application. Today we'll be taking a
look at their newest DVD-ROM drive, the
SDVD-101.
DVD-ROM drives are quickly becoming the de-facto
standard for most mainstream PC users. They
offer all of the functionality of a standard
CD-ROM drive as well as the ability to read
DVD-ROM disks and play DVD movies. In general,
DVD-ROM drives perform marginally lower than
high quality CD-ROM drives. It is only the
most hardcore of users, who have a need to copy
data from a CD-ROM at the fastest of speeds,
that would have any reason to not have a DVD-ROM
drive in their system. Some users (myself
included) actually have a DVD-ROM, CD-ROM and
CD-R all installed in a system together to have
the best of all worlds. :)
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| SDCD-101
Specifications / Features |
| DVD?
How can you tell? |
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- Interface
type
ATAPI/E-IDE (Support Ultra DMA 33,
DMA Mode 2 & PIO Mode4)
- Data
transfer rate
DVD:5535~13500 KB/sec
CD:2145~4800 KB/sec
- OS
Compatibility
Windows 2000 / NT / 98 / 95 /
3.x
OS/2 Warp
- Disc
Formats
DVD-ROM: Single layer, Dual layer (PTP,OTP)
CD-ROM (Mode 1&2 )
CD-ROM/XA (Mode 2, form 1 & 2)
CD-R, CD-RW,
CD-EXTRA (CD+)
Photo-CD (Single &
Multi-Sessions)
Video
CD, Karaoke CD
CD-I/MPEG, CDWO, I-TRAX CD
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- Access
time
DVD: 100ms
CD: 90ms
DRIVER Reliability (MTBF)
50,000 POH (25% Duty Cycle at Room
Temperature)
- Dimension
(W
x D x H)
149mmX42mmX196.5mm
- Installation:
Vertical/Horizontal
Audio Play/Skip button
Load/Eject button
Emergency manual eject
Stereo headphone jack
Rotary volume control knob
Power on/Busy/DVD LED indicators
- Accessories:
IDE40
pin flat cable & Audio
cable
Screws
User's Manual
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Initial
Impression:
In
general the physical quality of the drive seemed
very good. There isn't much to look at besides
the front controls, the tray and a metal case
but from what I could see this drive seemed
solid. The buttons on the front are relatively
large and have a good "feel" to them.
The disc tray slides in and out smoothly and is
very solid, there is almost no play at all. This
drive was built with very low tolerances in
mind.
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| Installation
/ Setup |
| Same
Ol' Stuff with the SDVD-101 |
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Installation
was very easy also. The drive was set up as a
master on it's own IDE channel using the
supplied cable. Installing this drive was no
different than the plethora of other IDE
CD/DVD-ROM drives available. There is only one
jumper with 3 different positions for master,
slave and cable select. Once you short the
proper position, plug it in and restart your
machine, the only step left is to enter your
BIOS and set the appropriate drive designation.
Noise
Level, Spin-Up, Sound Quality:
Well,
here comes the good news and the bad news.
The good news is that this is one REALLY quiet
drive. Throughout testing this drive was
virtually silent compared to most high speed
CD-ROM drives. The only drives I've heard
that were quieter are Kenwood drives with the
TrueX ZEN technology.
Sound
quality when playing audio CD's and during DVD
playback was also excellent. It very tough to
discern a difference between players, but I was
pleased throughout.
Now
for the bad news...Spin-Up times were extremely
long with certain disks and especially when a
CD-R was inserted. With some CD-Rs we had
to wait around 10-15 seconds until the drive was
ready and we could access the disk. However,
most "commercially" produced disks
opened quicker, so we would assume that a
firmware upgrade may resolve this issue.
Performance,
that's what it's all about...
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