CyQ've RW8080A- Page 1

- Introduction

Until now, we have tested various portable CD-R/RW drives. These drives, except from their obvious advantage- portability- against the internal brothers, come with an attractive design, small dimensions and weight, high compatibility and sometimes not easily ignored performance. This time we have in our labs another portable CD-R/RW drive by CyQ've. The "CyQ've RW8080A" is an 8/4/24 portable drive that supports both USB and FireWire interfaces, and optimistically comes to gain a part in the portable drive market. We will test the drive's performance, and compare it with two other category drives, PleXWriter PX-S88TU and TEAC CD-R/W 280PU.

- The package

CyQ've RW8080A was provided by MET Technology Co.,Ltd. The retail package includes the CyQ've RW8080A drive, a PCMCA card bus and a USB (4x4x6) cable. The attached recording software is Nero Burning-Rom. Although the drive supports the FireWire interface, there was no FireWire cable in the retail package.

In the right picture you can see the CyQ've FireWire adapter with three FireWire connectors, that allow multiple serial FireWire device connection. For our tests, we connected the drive through the FireWire interface, in order to test its full capabilities (8x4x24).

The drive has a gray external color, with the "CyQ've" logo in the middle of the top side. On the right-top side there is an operation red led. The tray is front-open and is not fully extended as you press the eject button, you will have to pull it out and push it back inside when you load o CD. Its exact dimensions are 137mm x 23mm x 162mm (WxHxD). On the bottom side of the drive, there is the CyQ've label.

The picture below is the drive's front side (tray). There is the eject button, a reading/writing green led and the emergency eject button.

On the back of the drive you can find a line out connector, the data output connector, the on/off switch and the power connector. The drive is powered with DC5V, 2A, which means that you have to use an AC/DC adapter in order to power it up from your home AC power connector.

The drive mainly has the following specifications: 8x writing, 4x rewriting and 24x reading, 2MB Buffer, USB 1.1 /FireWire compatible. When the drive is connected via a USB 1.1 interface its writing/reading capabilities are limited to 4x writing, 4x rewriting and 6x reading. The drive does support both 12cm and 8cm CDs and has 150ms access time according to the specifications.

- Installation

The drive was installed through the FireWire interface. You can also install it through USB 1.1/PCMCIA interfaces, but with a lower reading/writing performance (4/4/6 - 8/4/12).

CyQ've RW8080A was identified as "CD-R/RW RW8080A" inside the OS system. As Nero 5.5.6.4 reports it supports 8x writing, CD-Text, overburning but no buffer underrun protection.

- PC Setup

Intel P3 866@950
QDI Synactix 2EP
128MB SDRAM PC133
Adaptec 3100LP USB 2.0 card
Adaptec's USB 2.0 v1.0 drivers
WinMECyQ've RW8080A firmware v1.1
TEAC CD-R/W 280PU firmware v1.1A
PleXWriter PX-S88TU firmware v1.02 #TLA 102