Low cost...works great!!!
Written: Nov 16 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: EASY, CHEAP, COMPATIBLE WITH DOS, WIN3.1, WIN9x, etc
Cons: No REAL MODE driver available
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| JMarran's Full Review: Hi-Val 52X IDE CD-ROM Kit |
I am a do-it-yourself kind of guy. I used to work on my car myself, I wired my phone drops in my house myself (well, too!), so it was a cinch that I was to build my computer. What I couldn't afford to buy retail, I replicated out of hand-me-downs and donated parts and pieces. Everything went fine until....the CD-ROM.
Now, some of the pieces that I was using were "borrowed" from my faithful H-P Vectra (R.I.P.). They integrated well into the cavernous case that my 586 lives in. Except for the archaic CD drive. The old drive used a port on the sound card. This just wasn't going to do...as the speed is limited as well as the fact that it is an obscure Acer driver that I couldn't find. The only thing left to do was to venture to CompUSA.
Glancing at the sale-ads, the Hi-Val 40x/50x/52x CD-ROM kits are always for sale cheaply. I wanted cheap because this computer is a mutt, so spending TONS of cash just doesn't seem practical. So, for about $45 on sale, the 52x came home with me. The instructions were decently written...but be advised that Asian instructions TRANSLATED into English are poorly written, so take your time in installing the drive. After bolting the drive into one of the server case's NINE bays, the interconnect to the free IDE slot was next. Finally, it was time to load in the driver.
Ahh...yes...the driver. Now, there aren't any REAL MODE drivers available with this drive, so the only solution I came up with was to load DOS 6.22 onto Hard Drive #1. Once DOS was the main OS, the driver was loaded with no problem. I'm sure that there is an easier method for loading the software, but being a DOS fan, I used 6.22 to manipulate some system settings before loading Win95. Once the driver was installed, the CD-ROM was fully operational. And I haven't had any problems with it in almost a year of constant service.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
JMarran
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Location: Buffalo, New York
Reviews written: 48
Trusted by: 17 members
About Me:
Comdial Factory Certified PBX Technician, Irish language enthusiast
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