AOpen's 12x-Speed CD Writer
The Drive
Installing a CD-ROM or CD-R drive should be no problem even for beginners. After checking the jumpers at the backside of the drive (master or slave) you can already install it into an empty 5.25" drive bay. Since CD recorders are basically just a CD-ROM drive with enhanced features, every drive can be used instantly as it will be given a drive letter automatically. Inserting any data CD will be enough to test the basic functions of the drive.
In order to determine media compatibility, I used several brand and no-name CD-Rs. AOpen's CD-recorder worked fine at full speed with any CD-R I threw at it, regardless if high-class brand CD-R or if no-name unmarked CD-R. 4 MB of memory are buffering write data in order to ensure a constant data stream. This buffer can only bridge approx. two seconds, but it proved completely sufficient. If you use the bundled software Nero 5.0, you will get another 20 MB buffer of main system memory. Those 24 MB of write buffer reduce the chance of encountering the feared 'buffer underrun' to a minimum. However, users with 64 MB or even less memory cannot really take advantage of this software buffer feature, because the system will swap-out the software buffer to the hard drive as soon as the physical RAM is completely used. This obviously eliminates the advantage of stream buffering.
Aopen's drive proved to be a fully sufficient CD-recorder that produces reliable CDs/CDROMs in very short time.
