Mitsubishi / Diamond Data 52x24x52 CDRW

by **amdddr** on Tue Apr 29, 2003 9:36 pm

Does anyone have any information or feedback on these drives? The manufactuer says they run an Ali chipset, dont have Mt Rainier support but will soon with a firmware update and could not tell me anything about EFM encoding, DAO+RAW96 ect..

Does anyone know of any other drives that use an Ali chiset?

http://members.fortunecity.fr/vbl117 · by **vbl117** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 8:51 am

ALI stands for Acer Labs . I would avoid any motherboard or drive using an ALI chipset . Plus Acer/Benq drives ( using Acer/Benq chipset or ALI if you want ) have proven to be usually poor quality and picky with media . In all cases do not expect much with RAW mode or EFM encoding .

by **jase** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 9:18 am

Generally agree with vbl117's comments, but are Benq drives not still based on the Philips chipsets? (I don't know, it's a long time since I ventured near an Acer drive, I was bitten so hard by the last one).

These drives *used* to be DAO+RAW94 (almost compatible with RAW96 but corrects two check-bytes, making it useless for PSX-backup, for instance) and almost-correct EFM (will work with early SD2 but not the newer types). The drives also used to correct checksums on ordinary data, but did so by changing the data itself in some cases, so an ISO file patched with some cheat data etc would not copy properly in DAO mode. Basically the Philips/Acer chipset was a royal pain in the arse.

These drives were the pirates' choice for a while about 2 years ago until the LiteOn/MTK drives came along.

by **Ian** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 11:10 am

I'm pretty sure they switched to MediaTek starting with their 32x writer. I'm not sure about some of their new drives though.

http://members.fortunecity.fr/vbl117 · by **vbl117** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 11:39 am

I can be wrong :wink:

But knowing Acer/Benq/ALI makes chipset for optical drives ( CD/RW and DVD ROM chipsets) i was thinking they were using them in their CD/RW .

http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Artic ... =04&seq=12

Do you mean Philips burners are as crappy as Acer/Benq burners ?

by **CDRecorder** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 12:03 pm

jase wrote:Generally agree with vbl117's comments, but are Benq drives not still based on the Philips chipsets? (I don't know, it's a long time since I ventured near an Acer drive, I was bitten so hard by the last one).

These drives *used* to be DAO+RAW94 (almost compatible with RAW96 but corrects two check-bytes, making it useless for PSX-backup, for instance) and almost-correct EFM (will work with early SD2 but not the newer types). The drives also used to correct checksums on ordinary data, but did so by changing the data itself in some cases, so an ISO file patched with some cheat data etc would not copy properly in DAO mode. Basically the Philips/Acer chipset was a royal pain in the arse.

These drives were the pirates' choice for a while about 2 years ago until the LiteOn/MTK drives came along.

I have a Philips PCRW1208 with firmware 4.0. Nero InfoTool says that it actually does support RAW DAO 16 and RAW DAO 96. Is Nero InfoTool wrong, or did some of these drives actually support RAW DAO 96?

by **jase** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 12:05 pm

I can be wrong

I never said that

I was querying my own knowledge as much as anything else.....

Do you mean Philips burners are as crappy as Acer/Benq burners ?

In some ways, absolutely. Up to 12x, Philips drives were picky, had poor quality burns and the same difficult, quirky chipset (the problem with Philips is that they tend to be first to market with a lot of products, then don't change their basic designs, so early strange little anomalies with the early designs get carried across from generation to generation, while other companies copy the designs to a large extent and iron out all the bugs).

Acer added another flaw; poor build quality and QC.

by **CDRecorder** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 12:11 pm

jase wrote:Up to 12x, Philips drives were picky, had poor quality burns and the same difficult, quirky chipset (the problem with Philips is that they tend to be first to market with a lot of products, then don't change their basic designs, so early strange little anomalies with the early designs get carried across from generation to generation, while other companies copy the designs to a large extent and iron out all the bugs).

True, my 12x Philips has had some bugs (mostly with packet-writing, although I am not sure if it is the burner, the firmware upgrade, or the computer), but it has very good write quality when used with decent-quality media.

by **jase** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 12:18 pm

Yes, sorry, I meant to say poor write quality with some cheap media :oops:

the Philips drives had a quite rigid media table so with the right discs they were capable of some very decent writes. One of the problems with the Acer was that it lacked such a media table. That said, it did also mean that the Philips would often write at silly speeds to good media (I have a 4201 here which still insists on writing Verbatim and TY media (40/48x rated) at 2x rather than 4x :evil:

)

by **CDRecorder** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 1:14 pm

No need to be sorry, Jase. I guess I have just gotten the right discs for mine; I have had some subpar write quality with it, but those writes were still OK, (no C2 errors) and my other burners couldn't burn those discs any better.

Sorry to hear that your 4201 still refuses to write 40x or 48x Verbatin or TY at 4x. What write speeds are that writer capable of? I am not familiar with it.

by **amdddr** on Wed Apr 30, 2003 8:04 pm

http://www.bdt.co.nz/computer/product.a ... 441CDRW52A

The unit is above. In regards to ALi while its true that it stands for Acer Labs international it does not mean that Acer/Aopen/Benq products actualy use its chips! . This might sound crazy but its actualy quite common as most big companies run each division as a seperate company. So for instance open up an IBM Aptiva computer and you will probably find a Maxtor hard drive even though IBM storage is one of the biggest HDD manufacturers. Then open a IBM Laptop and you might find a toshiba HDD and a IBM HDD in a Toshiba laptop.

In regards to the chip in this CD-RW I beleive its a very new chipset
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/De ... tedID=3012
It would be very interesting to have a review of one and see if it suports correct EFM, DAO+RAW96 ect..

http://members.fortunecity.fr/vbl117 · by **vbl117** on Thu May 01, 2003 5:48 am

Sure Acer can use others chipsets than ALI chipset and the ALI chipset is new

( because it must be able to write at 52X or around ) .
But it does not mean ALI has improved his chipsets quality and i am not sure that many manufacturers trust/buy ALI chipsets !
I checked and you are right Aopen is an Acer subsidiary

.

http://global.acer.com/about/organization.htm

Aopen do not use ALI chipsets .

by **CDRecorder** on Thu May 01, 2003 10:52 am

That's really interesting.

AOpens have historically been Ricoh clones; I wonder why they don't use Acer/Benq drives.

Mitsubishi / Diamond Data 52x24x52 CDRW

Mitsubishi / Diamond Data 52x24x52 CDRW

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