Can I Burn a DVD on a 166MHz Pentium

[Fred176]

I have a 166MHz Pentium running Windows 98SE. On it, I have a Lite-on LH-20A1P186C 20x DVD±RW DL IDE Drive.

Does anyone know of a good program that can burn a DVD on this machine? So far, I have tried DeepBurner1 but it did not work. I have downloaded some other shareware that I've Yet to install and try, here's a list:

ExpressBurn
IMTOO Divx to DVD converter (just a converter, I want hard-drive to DVD)
Star Burn
dvdSanta (looks good, but is it just for movies, but not for backup from hard-drive to DVD?)

The Lite-on DVD came with a Nero 7 Essentials but they claim it's for Windows 2000 and up and their software takes up a lot of space as far as I can tell. It's a good company, I guess I just want something simpler.

Anyone know of a DVD writer that might work? The DVD drive installed fine.

Also, the "blank" DVD I put in has a .cda audio track - should that be there?
Thanks.

 

[MRFS]

try BurnAware free

http://www.burnaware.com/burnaware_free.html


MRFS

 

[Fred176]

Thanks, I must have downloaded the Windows 2000 and up version of Burn Aware - there were dll reg problems (which is a surefire way to tell I downloaded a non windows-98 version) vers. 2.1.4.0, 6.99 MB (7,336,282 bytes). Same thing happened with Santa DVD. I managed to get further with another program from NCH Swift, a company whose products I've used for audio recording, but after installing and running, it failed and hung up my computer while doing the verify. The DVD was unreadable. I will try Express Burn Plus as they say that the Burn DVD doesn't work on the freeware version. So let's give NCH Swift another shot (their software burnt 1.244 GB in only 5 minutes, which is good for a Pentium 166).

But the program that I just had success with is a download of Cheetah
Version 2.42. It burnt the same 1.244GB in about 9 minutes and it was flawless, no hangups and the file system rebuilt perfectly. I just gave James Mieczkowski his 15 bucks on Paypal. So at least I've proven that it's possible to write a DVD on a Pentium 166 withe the LiteOn 20x drive I mentioned (I forget the exact model). which is all I wanted to prove. Later, I can review things with a fine-toothed comb more, where I try changing file types (ISO/Joliet, ...).

By the way, the Cheetah software recognized the drive as a 16X, not 20X, and this might make a difference, not sure.

All in all, a good test.

NOTE: The above are not professional reviews and I would hope to further test licensed copies of these programs.

try BurnAware free

http://www.burnaware.com/burnaware_free.html


MRFS

 

[sminlal]

Can I Burn a DVD on a 166MHz Pentium

I don't think the 166MHz Pentiums get hot enough to burn a DVD, the best you can probably hope for is that it will melt the plastic a little... :lol:

 

[jitpublisher]

Would say 99% of your problems are going to be with Win98, or your hard drive not being able to transfer data fast enough to prevent buffer underruns, not the 166mhz Pentium. I see that you did have success, but some things to take into consideration if you do run into problems.
Make sure you don't have a lot of background programs running, defrag the source drive before starting the burn. If you are burning from optical drive to optical drive, first copy the data to the hard drive, defrag, and then do the burn.

 

[Fred176]

I hoped it would cook my eggs for me this morning, but about all I got was a mother chicken, she moved her eggs in and sat right down on top ...

I don't think the 166MHz Pentiums get hot enough to burn a DVD, the best you can probably hope for is that it will melt the plastic a little... :lol:

 

[Fred176]

Bwok, bwok, aah! nice and warm here.

Actually, I started a 4.2GB burn at 10:17AM this morning, then I cracked an egg over the DVD (fortunately, it is the top-most drive on my Pentium 166), but after dripping egg everywhere, I cleaned it up and left the room, reappearing at 36%, 54%, 88%, and finally, at about 12:15PM, I went up and the DVD had been ejected, a perfect burn. So I've now backed up a bunch of hard-drives on an old Windows 95 machine by connecting through a Windows NT4.0 machine (NTFS, nice large drives), and logging on on the DVD machine, the Windows 98SE. So all the machines basically pitched in and did their job. I have no idea how many times it's possible to use a DVD to write before it dies - I'll find out. And it might be better to use an external USB drive, but I don't mind this approach for that one machine - which has a lot of surfing video clips (like 2GB max. size).

Note that I have not yet tried a multi-session burn yet. Instead, I copies 2 of the hard drives contents onto a folder of my NT machine's drive (not badly fragmented). Note also that when I burn with Cheetah, I am burning from a mapped NT drive onto the DVD which is on my Windows 98 machine. Hence, it would be a little faster if I did it locally - some day, I might have some partitions big enough - right now my Windows 98 machine's partitions are a max. size of 2GB so I had to use the NT machine for this burn. My first burn was done from the Windows 98 drive onto the Windows 98 DVD, a somewhat faster setup. It did 1.24 GB in about 10 minutes. This time, it did 4.2GB in 120 minutes - much slower. What I need to try some time, is the 4.2GB burn again, but from a local drive, or perhaps I'll do my next burn of a 2GB drive, and see if it's like 15 or 20 minutes. I didn't expect the burn over the network to take so long - hmmph!

Anyway, no errors yet with Cheetah's program. But I can't get the stinking chicken and her chicks off my computer!
Enjoy.

Would say 99% of your problems are going to be with Win98, or your hard drive not being able to transfer data fast enough to prevent buffer underruns, not the 166mhz Pentium. I see that you did have success, but some things to take into consideration if you do run into problems.
Make sure you don't have a lot of background programs running, defrag the source drive before starting the burn. If you are burning from optical drive to optical drive, first copy the data to the hard drive, defrag, and then do the burn.

 

[Guest]

love the retro kit you are still using +1

 

[Fred176]

Yeah, there are some nice retros out there, some with hefty processor speeds running like Windows 95/98, even some Windows 3.1's, I still have my mother's old XT that I will eventually put a 20MB hard-drive in - wooh, talk about retro! I used to run Lotus on it to do filter calculations! Even an XT kicks ass!

 

[4Ryan6]

@Fred176

Your biggest limitation will be the amount of system memory you have 64mb for CD burning and 128mb for DVD burning, thats basic minimum to keep the OP/SYS and resources clear to use the memory needed to do the burning.

So if you're running a P166 you're also running the old SIMM ram, Right?

So how much total system memory are you running?

 

[Fred176]

Yeah, only 128MB (1024) right now. The DVD burner works good so far. But I've been burning over the network. Now that I've reformatted, I'll be able to take most of my stuff to local, before I burn. This should help speed and memory, and reliability (which matters most unless I'm just burning an audio/video test-track). What I should run for the sake of the world is the following benchmarks: CD burns local vs. CD burns network. I realize most people don't want to burn off of a network but it's nice to know that it can be done (but I'm actually not 100% sure since one of my burns had an error). Yeah, I need to test this more since one of my burns didn't finalize properly over the network. Also, my local machine has 2GB drives (FAT16). One of my network drives has 4GB drives but mostly the files are 2GB (max avi size in old Windows op systems). And the other is NTFS so it has giant drives, way bigger than 4GB. But this just means I need to copy less than the whole drive sometimes and hope I don't have a big file. But what I should do is make some nice movies and soundtracks and use the burner mostly for that. I was just using the DVD to backup computers because I lacked an external drive so until I get an external drive, I'm just using the burner.

But you mentioned memory - I'll have to hook in a memory tracker API via C++ samples or something and check out how much they use. That could be a problem as you say. All video/file writer/audio programs DO grab a whole bunch of buffers. But the truth is, they tend to grab much more than they need to. An AVI file can be written at 30 frames per second with even only one buffer and on a Pentium 166. A Pentium 166 can do a lot for us.

I guess the dumbest thing I'm doing is using an Ultra66 controller when I have faster ones. But I'm saving the others for faster machines I want to build. This was just an exercise in FDISK/FORMAT, and how to install Windows. It's just a little play before I make some faster machines assuming I can find some on Craig's list, ebay, goodwill or whatever. The machine that I have now rebuilt will soon have a tv card so I will be able to capture video from cameras. A Pentium 166 can handle this believe it or not. My other Pentium already does this fine. But if I add FAT32, it could get fun making huge videos. I might still run into some problems with AVI limitations so I may need to upgrade some of my stream writer stuff to get around this. I just blew a monitor but my wife saved me - she had one from her work place in our closet so I'm back up now.

Definitely time to start using the beast - but first I have to add another drive and format it as FAT32.

But it was fun seeing the controller finally see an 80GB drive and I never would have thought that I needed to update my FDISK so no more x - 64GB error. And it could be real fun if I actually play some old games in Windows 3.1 - one of the best fruits of not having the actual Windows 98 but only an upgrade is that it forces me to put the old crap on first so it qualifies me.

:lol: