WAITEC SfinX 16 IDE Combo DVD/CD-RW - Page 1

- Introduction

This time Waitec offers an attractive IDE recording / DVD playback solution for all those who need a combo device for fast and easy CD burnings and complete playback support for all the DVD formats. The Waitec SfinX 16 can write your CD media at 16x and playbacks your favorite DVD movie at fast and comes to compete other manufacturers with respective products like Philips and Toshiba. In our test results we compare the Waitec SfinX 16 with an already tested drive, the Toshiba SD-R1202.

- The drive

The combo drive supports 16x CD writing (CLV), 10x re-writing, 40x (CD) and 10x DVD-ROM reading. The firmware version installed is v.B1.1 and the cache buffer of the drive is 8 MB.

Nero Info tool also states that the drive can read CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/+RW, Video CD, supports Packet writing and TAO, DAO, SAO, RAW SAO 96 and RAW DAO 96 modes.

The drive came with Region code 2 set and the region can totally change 5 times.

- The package

The retail package includes the SfinX 16 drive, CyberLink PowerDVD v3.0 DVD playback software, Nero Burning Rom v5.5.7.1, InCD v2.82-- for CD creation and back-up, one piece each of CD-R and CD-RW blank media, IDE BUS and audio cables, mounting screws and an installation instruction manual .

The generic looking front panel of the drive includes the"Waitec SfinX", "DVD-ROM" and "HS-RW" logos. There is also one operation led and the eject button.

On the rear panel of the drive there are the usual connectors (IDE interface, power), the jumpers for setting the drive as Master/Slave/Cable Select, the SPDIF output connector and 3 jumpers which are not used (factory reserved).

The IDE connection can be run in PIO Modes, DMA Mode 2 (16.6 MB/s), or DMA mode 2 and UDMA mode 2, depending on what you set in the motherboard's BIOS. There is no way to force the drive into DMA mode via jumpers.

- Installation

Waitec SfinX 16 was installed as Master in the secondary IDE BUS. The drive worked in UDMA-2 mode and after boot up, it identified itself as the "Waitec SFINX16 ". Under WinXP, DMA was activated automatically.

The drive is a March 2002 model , with vB1.1 firmware revision installed. The available buffer underrun protection is the "SafeLink". We used Nero v5.5.9.0, InCD v3.21 and CloneCD v4.0.1.9 for our tests.