Waitec X-FILE DVD+RW - Page 1

Introduction

Waitec enters the DVD recording for PC market with a new DVD+RW data drive. DVD recorders are certainly be the fastest growing consumer electronics products ever launched, and the competition is already established among the different DVD recording formats. Waitec adopts the +RW format in order to offer consumers abilities for data back-up or digitally video recording material onto a re-writable optical DVD disc. The "Waitec X-FILE" currently supports only CD/DVD+RW writing and comes to compete other manufacturers such as Aopen, Ricoh and Philips.

The drive

Waitec X-FILE supports 12x (CD) and 2.5x DVD+RW writing, 10x re-writing, 32x (CD) and 8x (DVD-ROM/+RW) reading. The drive also supports "SafeLink" in order to avoid buffer underruns for CD format . Its writing speeds are: 2x, 4x, 8x, 12x (CLV) writing and 2x, 4x and 10x (CLV) re-writing.

The writing speed for DVD+RW format is 2.4X CLV (X factor is now 1385Kb/s) which is equivalent to the 20x CD-RW drives. The drive doesn't support CAV writing technology. The supported cache buffer is 2MB, and supports RPCII region control system, allowing a four times region change. Waitec X-FILE does not support writing to DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RW and of course to DVD-RAM media.

The package

The supplied package included the Waitec X-FILE drive, Nero Vision Express CD/DVD video editing/authoring/burning software, Power DVD player software, one piece of Waitec 4.7GB DVD+RW media, 1 Waitec CD-R 80min 24x media, an installation guide, screw sets and audio cables.

On the front panel of the drive there are the "Waitec X-FILE ", "High-Speed RW", and the "DVD+RW" logos. The drive has a reading/writing operating led, headphone jack, volume control 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):

Installation

Waitec X-FILE 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 "DVDRW6001".

The drive was a March 2002 model with an initial firmware revision v1.51. The drive is equipped with 2MB cache buffer.

PC setup

WinMe/XP OSs
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
Waitec X-FILE firmware v1.51
Ricoh MP5120 firmware v1.30
Philips DVDRW208 firmware v1.35
AOpen RW5120 firmware v1.37