1. Introduction
DatOptic
SpeedBurn24 - Page 1
- Introduction
External
drives give the chance to add an extra device to your PC when your IDE channels
are reserved or even to move the drive between PC Desktop / Notebook without
Reset / Power Down your computer. The drive we have in our hands is an external
LiteOn LTR-24102B and is provided by "DatOptic".The
drive comes with a Firewire / IEEE-1394 interface which offers plug and play
compatibility.
In
addition, "DatOptic" provided us with a 1394-IDE Bridge Board Firewire
to ATA/ATAPI card, ideal to convert your existing IDE devices such as CD-ROM,
CD-R HD, to plug-and-play FireWire, versions.
- The package
The supplied retail package contained DatOptic's SpeedBurn24, which is based
upon the famous 'LiteOn LTR-24102B' external drive, a Firewire connection cable,
a PCI Firewire card (for using with the External FireWire drive) and a driver
floppy disk.
The drive is packed into the essential blue plastic case. In the picture you
can see the front side, which reveals the familiar Lite-ON 24202B, with the
extra power button on the right-top side of the case.
On the rear side of the external case, there are two FireWire connectors, allowing
the serial connection of the drive to other FireWire devices, an audio output
used for speaker connections, a cooling fan and the AC input connector.
In the picture below you can see the internal of the case without the drive.
Beginning from the left bottom side, you can see on the audio cable, the IDE
to FireWire bridge card with the IDE cable in the side of the drive. On the
right side of the case there are the power conversion circuits, which supply
the drive with the appropriate operation voltage. The same circuits also power
the cooling fan.
This is a top uncovered view when the drive is connected into the external
case.
The topside of the case has the yellow "FireWire" label, the "SpeedBurn24"
logo by Dat Optic Inc.
2. Installation
DatOptic
SpeedBurn24 - Page 2
DatOptic's 1394-IDE Bridge Board FireWire to ATA/ATAPI card
With
the integrated Serial Bus Protocol (SBP-2 Target Revision 4), the 13940-IDE
uses generic FireWire/IEEE-1394 device drivers available in the Win9x, Win2k
and MacOS 8.6 or higher operating systems.
The 13940-IDE is appropriate interface for applications in removable media
drives such as: CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-RAM, Tape back-up and Hard disk
drives. These peripherals can be quickly converted to plug-and-play FireWire
versions. Both of ATA and ATAPI devices are supported.
DAT
Optic Inc. 1394-IDE Bridge board provides an up to 400mbps data connection between
ATA/ATAPI peripheral devices and 1394/FireWire computer ports. This offers vendors
the opportunity to continue to take advantage of the ATA/ATAPI low cost while
presenting high performance, hot swappable devices into PC and MAC rapidly expanding
1394/FireWire markets.
DatOptic states that "...When using the converted IDE device to FireWire
device with our Internal FireWire Bridge Adapter, your computer will gain back
up 85% of CPU's power. Computer now can run faster, smoother, and better. In
addition, with our Internal FireWire Bridge Adapter computer system is no longer
subject to four IDE devices and IRQ limitation. Now you can have up to 63 Internal
or External IDE devices with only ONE IRQ..."
- Specifications
|
Operating Temperature
Operating Humidity
Dimension
IDE peripherals
Operating System
IDE Interface
IEEE 1394 Interface
Connectors
Power Requirement
|
0 C to 50 C
5% to 95% non-condensing
7.3(L)cm x 4.4 (W)cm
CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, Hard Disk, MO Drive,
Jaz, Zip, Tape Back up.
Win98SE, ME, Win 2000, MAC 8.6 or higher
ATAPI/ATA-66. P/N: 1394-IDE
ATAPI/ATA-100. P/N: 1394-IDE5
IEEE 1394-1995, IEEE 1394a compliant. Support data transfer
rate up to 100, 200, 400 MBps. SBP-2 Target Revision 4 compliant.
40-pin IDE connector x 1
6-pin IEEE 1394 connector x 2
4-pin power connector x 1
5V/ DC ; 130mA ~ 200mA
|
- Installation
We installed the drive through the FireWire interface and Windows Millennium
recognized the drive as "Lite-On 24102B". The drive was originally
flashed with v5S.01, and we attempted to upgrade it to the new v5S.54. Unfortunately,
the firmware installer failed to recognize the SpeedBurn24 drive. For that propose
we flashed it after connecting the drive through the IDE interface.
As Nero reports, the new firmware version installed is the 5S54. In the picture
there are also showed the other known features supported by the drive.
Apart
from the external drive installation, in order to test the DatOptic IDE to Firewire
card, we had to install the card on the back of an IDE drive. Beginning from
the card, we could say that it is has a delicate structure and users should
be careful when they will try to place the card.
The front of the adapter has two Firewire connectors, to be connected to your
PC Firewire card. On the back of the adapter you will find the IDE connector
in which you should plug the IDE device in. The adapter is powered by the PC
through a regular power cable similar to those you normally power all the internal
devices on your computer.
With careful handles, we attached the adapter card on the back of an IDE drive.
AS shown in the picture, we connected the Firewire and power cables to the PC.
Have in mind, that the jumper setting on the drive for this connection is not
"master" or "slave" but the "cable select".
The drive was not identified immediately after the connection, but some seconds
later. The drive is now ready for use.
3. Performance
DatOptic
SpeedBurn24 - Page 3
Performance
The DatOptic SpeedBurn24 drive we had in our hands gave more or less the same
level of performance with the LiteOn 24102B we had tested in our previous tests.
The external FireWire drive was easily installed and worked smoothly throughout
all the writing or reading tasks we performed. The main difference was that
the external drive used less CPU than the IDE drive as most of our tests showed.
DatOptic SpeedBurn24 can be bought directly from CalOptic
for a holiday special price of $189.
We
tested the DatOptic IDE to Firewire card under Windows Millennium and Windows
XP. We connected an IDE CD-RW drive through the card. The drives we connected
through the Firewire card were an ACER CRW2010A (firmware vH.KF) and a Yamaha
CRW3200E (firmware vT.3a). Both drive recognized under WinMe without any problem.
Under
Win XP, the drives were not identified with their names, but Windows reported
the new devices as "DAT OPTIC INC. IEEE 1394 SBP2".
For measuring the CPU usage we performed 2 major tasks:
a) Copy on the fly between the FireWire enabled drive and the Pioneer
DVD 106S IDE DVD-ROM drive. For the copy process we used Nero Burning Rom v5.5.6.4
b) Copy from HD (image to CD). For that propose we used PlexTools v1.08
to create an image to the HD with Nero Burning Rom v5.5.6.4. Afterwhile we burned
the image with the FireWire enabled recorder.
In both cases for measuring the CPU Usage, TaskInfo 2000 was beeing used. For
double checking the test results we used the buld-in CPU monitor of WinXP, which
gave similar results.
- WinME
|
Copy On The Fly
|
|
|
CPU % Usage
|
|
Drives Connected
|
IDE connection
|
DatOptic Convertor
|
|
Yamaha CRW3200E
|
36
|
30
|
|
Acer 20x
|
29
|
24.5
|
|
Average CPU utilization saving: 15.9%
|
|
Copy from HD
|
|
|
CPU % Usage
|
|
Drives Connected
|
IDE connection
|
DatOptic Convertor
|
|
Yamaha CRW3200E
|
6.68
|
6.32
|
|
Acer 20x
|
5.44
|
4.9
|
|
Average CPU utilization saving: 7.36%
|
- WinXP
Under WinXP we could't use the Acer 20x FireWire enabled drive since not only
Nero but other CDR software (CloneCD) failed to recognize it. The main cause
for this situation is that Acer CRW2010A doesn't return a complete ID string
to the system but only "CD-R/W 20X10". Both Yamaha CRW3200E and other
drives (Aopen CRW2440) we tested worked fine.
|
Copy On The Fly
|
|
|
CPU % Usage
|
|
Drives Connected
|
IDE connection
|
DatOptic Convertor
|
|
Yamaha CRW3200E
|
15.3
|
13.5
|
|
Acer 20x
|
17
|
-
|
|
Average CPU utilization saving: 15.4%
|
|
Copy from HD
|
|
|
CPU % Usage
|
|
Drives Connected
|
IDE connection
|
DatOptic Convertor
|
|
Yamaha CRW3200E
|
8.5
|
7
|
|
Acer 20x
|
4
|
-
|
|
Average CPU utilization saving: 17.6%
|
- Test Results
The above test results show that the usage of the IDE to Firewire adapter could
save 8%-16% of your computer resources during any process that uses an IDE device.
The profit in CPU utility is bigger under Win XP OS. Whether your processor
gives you enough power or not for your daily needs, the IDE to Firewire convert
card by DatOptics is an extra help to carry out a smooth and easy operation
of your external IDE devices. In addition, the plug-and play capability the
Firewire interface gives an easy and quick device connection and installation.
DatOptics 1394-IDE Bridge board comes in two versions, with ATA66 and ATA 100
support. The ATA100 drives costs $58 and can be obtained from CalOptic's.