- Introduction

ASUS and WAITEC did not stay out of CD-RW recording at 24X. ASUS presents the CRW 2410S and WAITEC the MEGALUS model. The drives come to join the already widely supported 24X market by TDK, Sanyo, Plextor, Lite-on. Since the recording time of 24X "Z-CLV" recording technology is "established" in approximately 4 min, our interest is focus to those specific details that can make the difference to any of the tested models. A look at the testing results will give an answer to all of our questions...

- Features

Both ASUS CRW-2410S and WAITEC MEGALUS support 24x writing, 10x re-writing and 40x reading speeds. With 24x writing speed you can have a full 74min CD under 4mins! That is the fastest current recording speed you can get, but for getting that level of performance you will have to use very good quality media! The drive is also equipped with "BURN-Proof" technology also supports: "Zone-CLV" recording mode and "FlexSS-BP" quality control mechanism. Read more about those 2 technologies over here.

- The packages

The package supplied for ASUS CRW-2410S v6h35 was the retail version. This included: The drive itself, a user's manual, a Ricoh 24x CD-R blank, an ASUS High-Speed RW Blank, Audio cables, mounting screws and an IDE cable. The software supplied with the drive was Nero Burning ROM v5.5.3.5. The drive updated with newer 6.36 firmware for all recording/reading tests.

The WAITEC Megalus package included a user's manual in a CD-ROM, a WAITEC 24x CD-R blank, a WAITEC High-Speed RW Blank, Audio cables, mounting screws and an IDE cable. The software supplied with the drive was Prassi PrimcoCD 2.0. The specific software version is can be updated to Prassi Primco Plus 2 for Megalus, using another supplied CD-ROM. Also in the package there was a CD-ROM contained a collection of pictures of various WAITEC's products.

On the front of both drives there are two leds, the headphone jack, the volume control, and the eject button. Both models have the "BP Rec" logo.

The back of both drives is similar. We find the usual connectors (IDE interface, power), the jumpers for setting the drive as Master/Slave and the SPDIF (analog/digital) output connectors. As you can see there are also some slots used for extra cooling but the drives are not equipped with any cooling fan.

- Installation

Both drives were installed as Master in the secondary IDE BUS (separately tested). They worked in PIO MODE-4 mode and after booting they were identified as "ASUS CRW-2410S" and "WAITEC MEGALUS", respectively. We unchecked the Auto Insert notification, checked DMA and rebooted.

- Test Machine

WinMe OS
Soyo 7VCA
Celeron II 566 over clocked to 850 MHz
128MB SDRAM PC 133
WD 18GB UDMA 66
Quantum Fireball EX 6.4 GB UDMA 33
DAWI 2975 - PCI (ULTRA) SCSI Host Adapter
ATI AIW 128
ASUS CRW 2410S firmware v6.36
WAITEC MEGALUS firmware v6.34
TEAC CD-W524E firmware v1.0A
PleXWriter PX-W2410A firmware v1.02