Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.cd-rom Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!sgiblab!sgigate.sgi.com!olivea!charnel!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!uwm.edu!fnnews.fnal.gov!att-in!cbnewse!ers From: ers@cbnewse.cb.att.com (eric.r.sterbenz) Subject: Re: So, what's the problem with mitsumi FX-001D? Organization: AT&T Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 16:38:16 GMT Message-ID: References: <2kov7r$n5c@phakt.usc.edu> Lines: 54 Xref: cdrom.com alt.cd-rom:1185 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.cd-rom:1527 In article <2kov7r$n5c@phakt.usc.edu> jleon@phakt.usc.edu (Juan Carlos Leon) writes: >I'm a bit puzzled with this. Some people says the mitsumi is better than >the panasonic 563B because it's faster access time and transfer speed, others >say that since it only has 32Kb cache is slower than the panasonic which has >64Kb cache, then some people says mitsumi is better since it uses a 16bit >interface and other people says that mitsumi is only headaches. >I'm currently have a OmniCD (panasonic 563B), the mitsumi CDROM was cheaper so >I said: "since it's cheaper shouldn't be better than the OmniCD". >So can anybody clearly state what's the problem with mitsumi, is it really >better than the panasonic? > >Thanks for any help. > >Juan Leon. > >-- >email: jleon@scf.usc.edu *-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-* >Major in Electrical Engineering, Computers | --****-- | >University of Southern California | | >Los Angeles, CA. USA *-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-* Juan, I cannot say anything about the panasonic, but I can relay my experience with my Mitsumi. I have the FX001D connected to an Orchid GW32 card in GW2K 4DX-33V. I am running DOS 6.2 with mscdex 2.23 to be able for smartdrv to cache the cdrom. I am getting very good performance (MPC Wizard report appox 380 KBps with or without smartdrv enabled). Like any other component you get out what you put into it. It takes a bit of careful setup to get the most out of it. It was actually very easy install. The only problem was that the GW32 did not support the same DMA channels as the Mitsumi driver does. I was therefore forced to used the Mitsumi DMA driver (mtmcdae.sys) in interrupt mode. As you can see this does not seem to be a big performance problem (I have also seen some things in the net that say DMA may not be all it cracked up to be. I would be interested in seeing some results from people using the Mitsumi controller with and without DMA). I believe that the real performance boost is following the Mitsumi manual's reccommendation for configuring 20 buffers in the driver (I also have them in expanded memory). The only other problem, if you can call it that, with the Mitsumi drive is that it has to read something off a disk when you first put it in before you can access the drive. This usually takes about 5 secs. No big deal. Anyways I am pretty happy with the drive. I hope this helps. Thanks, E. R. Sterbenz ers@cbnmva.att.com