[CDonG4]

So I have an 8x4x32x QPS Quefire, basically an ATAPI 8x4x32x Plextor drive in an external housing and a conversion to firewire, as far as i can tell.

I'm seeing these nice fast 16x10x40x Plextor drives for about 200 now...

I want to take out the 8x drive, plop in the 16x and hope everything works nicely, do you think it will... please tell me, because it would suck to have to return the damned thing....

thank you in advance everyone.

[CDonG4]

yeah and if anyone wants to buy the 8x4x drive, im selling it starting at $75 (US)

[elzinat]

the QPS drive is in fact just the plextor drive with a firewire bridge, and the drive should be out-swappable. the potential problem with swapping is that you might not be able to get a driver to recognize the drive. if the QPS driver software looks for a specific drive behind the bridge (which it probably does), it would not be able to recognize the new drive at all. even if you trick it into thinking it's the same old drive, then it may not tbe able to behave in a way other than how the old drive behaved (ie you wouldn't be able to burn above 8x because the Toast driver tells Toast that the burner is an 8x burner). the drivers that ship with the new fast plextor drive will not be able to see the plextor drive behind the bridge. and the new 16x10x40 QPS drives are shipping with (Mac-incompatible) Teac mechanisms, so you would not be able to use that new driver either. my guess is that you would have to modify the drivers in order to get it to work, though in terms of the hardware itself there wouldn't be any problem.

ps. please post sale items in our Buy/Sell forum

[This message has been edited by elzinat (edited 03-28-2001).]

[CDonG4]

hmmm....

anyway to tell before hand if it would work or not, maybe I should just swap for a 12x one because QPS does have mac drivers for those right?

[rgruber]

Originally posted by CDonG4:
hmmm....

anyway to tell before hand if it would work or not, maybe I should just swap for a 12x one because QPS does have mac drivers for those right?

Have you thought about just selling your current CD-RW and getting an ADS Pyro Case and one of the new Plextor's? Probably be more expensive but I bet it would be more upgradable for the future and more likely to work. Seems like screwing with the Que might not be worth the hastle. If you can get about $135 bucks for it, you can buy the ADS Case and it would be a wash. I just sold an older 4x 4x 16x Yamaha SCSI external on Ebay for $135.

Just a thought.

Rob

[lucylawless]

I have a Que!Fire 4x4x24 and I assume it's pretty similar to yours, and I'd also like to try this if it works....

regarding the drivers, my drive came with none. All that was on the mac side of the cd was Toast 4.0 OEM. Since then I've used toast deluxe 4.1 and different betas of toast 5 on two different machines, never installing anything but toast (no hardware-specific drivers). Does this mean the drivers issue is moot? (this is firewire...)

Someone who knows, please post your thoughts...
CDonG4, did yours come with drivers?

[elzinat]

Originally posted by lucylawless:
regarding the drivers, my drive came with none. All that was on the mac side of the cd was Toast 4.0 OEM. Since then I've used toast deluxe 4.1 and different betas of toast 5 on two different machines, never installing anything but toast (no hardware-specific drivers). Does this mean the drivers issue is moot? (this is firewire...)[/B]

Yeah, actually Toast has custom drivers for every single supported drive. : |
if you check your Extensions folder, there are about 20 "Toast..." files, different drivers for different drives. My Que Fire 8x4x32 is powered (or rather, was until Wednesday, as it is now dead) by the extension "Que! Fire," without which Toast could not recognize the device.
the potential problem is that there is probably no existing Toast driver for the new fast Plextor drive behind the FireWire bridge QPS used with the old Plextor drive, unless the old QPS driver is generic, and retrieved information about the drive mechanism from the drive itself. unfortunately, this is not something which I can verify.

[lucylawless]

Originally posted by elzinat:
Yeah, actually Toast has custom drivers for every single supported drive. : |
if you check your Extensions folder, there are about 20 "Toast..." files, different drivers for different drives. My Que Fire 8x4x32 is powered (or rather, was until Wednesday, as it is now dead) by the extension "Que! Fire," without which Toast could not recognize the device.
the potential problem is that there is probably no existing Toast driver for the new fast Plextor drive behind the FireWire bridge QPS used with the old Plextor drive, unless the old QPS driver is generic, and retrieved information about the drive mechanism from the drive itself. unfortunately, this is not something which I can verify.

Yeah, see that's weird, too. I kinda remember having extensions like that in the OEM version of Toast, but with my pay versions, the only extensions are Toast Firewire Support, Toast USB Support, and Toast CD Reader. And I remember having a lot of trouble getting the OEM version to see my drive, and a lot less (if any) trouble with the pay versions. Does that just mean that the Toast Firewire Support file is just a combination of drivers for many specific drives?

And what about Apple's iWares? They probably have hardware-specific drivers for each drive, too, right? But what about all that hacking around that was being done before v1.1 was released? I didn't take part, but could some of that, uh, research apply to this challenge?

[CDonG4]

My QueFire! 8x4x32x won't work with that QueFire extension... how odd... It really sucks because if i buy the 16x10x at the cheapest places I can find it, they wont accept CD-RW returns or its like a 15% restocking fee, argh... it may be worth 30 bucks and shipping...

I noticed on in the news today, or yesterday, that TEAC said its 16x10x was fully mac compatible... just curious.. how through toast or what? I wouldn't try sticking it in my QPS housing. i dont think...

whats the word on retail superdrives...?? I kinda hate my DVD-RAM drive... i'd like to sell it and get a superdrive instead.. ugh so many intentions, so little cash.

[deaconMPG]

My thought on this is what particularly are you going to gain by the faster drive. Yes there would be a reduction in tie but by how much.

I pooked around the QPS site and found this PDF [ http://www.qps-inc.com/products/161040.pdf ] quoting that with a 16x the burn speed of a 6 minutes for a 700MB disc.

So how long does it take you to burn a 700MB disc now. I have the QPS Que Firewire 8x4x32 running off a G4 350mhz 704MB RAM. I think it would burn a disc like that in 8-9 minutes.
So my point is just that you picked up 2 minutes, but also the fast a drive burns I have heard it said the smaller the pit the greater the chance an older reader won't take the disc.

But it also comes down it if you want to be able to say "I have a 16x CD burner" then sure if you got the cash. Do it up.

Nutshell version: How much time are you going to gain, vs what are you going to give up like can it be read by old drives

Have a good one

[This message has been edited by deaconMPG (edited 04-03-2001).]

[CDonG4]

very true... 8x is just a tad slow for me... but it doesn't really matter now because I have Toast 5 which has DAO and backround burning so im fine... i need to get blank CD's though

[elzinat]

Originally posted by CDonG4:
whats the word on retail superdrives...?? I kinda hate my DVD-RAM drive... i'd like to sell it and get a superdrive instead.. ugh so many intentions, so little cash.

I recal reading the first external ones will be shipping in early Fall, $1000.( )
Hopefully by the time they ship this information will prove false ;-D.

[CDonG4]

sweet jeebus thats alot of money... i'd probably go for that dual G4/500 upgrade before a superdrive... my goodness thats alot of money.