Optical Disc Drive owners club

[lexluthermiester]

I like having the MB mount parallel with the ground so you don't have to worry about GPU sag or needing to get some kind of support bracket.

THIS! That's one of the main reasons why I like cases like this too!

Would it make a good test bench?

It would if you take the top and side panels off. Lots of open space. Compared to other workbench type "cases" it's also less expensive at about $99.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I've looked at it before for the same reasons, but keep getting hung up on the footprint. Also not terribly fond of the aestetics.

Would it make a good test bench?

Since this topic isn't really about cases, but about optical drives, I'll put my answer in the spoiler below about the case. However, since the case does support 5.25" drives, I would have to say that it is a nice case to have if you don't need to swap out or replace any 5.25" optical drives often. Get them installed and you're all set!

Spoiler

If you don't have a need to swap out drives mounted in the HDD cage (under the MB tray) and didn't need to swap out PSUs at all, it could make for a good bench case. Sides and top come off very easy and the front panel is pretty simple to remove. The only issue is if you have to add drives to the HDD cage or add something to the 5.25" bays....you have to remove the MB tray to get to those things so you can run power cables and data cables. If you don't need to swap out anything under the MB tray, then you're golden.

Looks of it used to bother me, but I'm not staring at it when I'm using my computer. Plus, I don't like RGB (thought it was cool years ago, had a clear side panel case and the LED on all the fans hurt my eyes and all the glowing and flashing lights drove me crazy) so having a case that hides the little things inside that do RGB (like the H100i AIO, yeah, I can turn it off, but I'm too lazy to navigate the software) is just a bonus.

The one thing that the case lacks is filters on all the openings. After adding mesh filter covers I get very little dirt/dust inside of the case. I got magnetic mesh filters here for my cases: https://www.demcifilter.com/demciflex-magnetic-dust-filter-for-haf-xb-dust-filter-kit

Sadly, the only downside is finding a 200mm fan that properly fits the top of the case. You need a Cooler Master Megaflow 200. This fan has proper mounting on it to screw into the top panel of the case. No standard 200mm fan will fit, at best you might be able to line up 2 screw holes on one side, but that's it. Finding this fan has become troublesome over the years. I found they are listed on Newegg, but they all seem to come out of China. I picked up a spare one for $17 a few weeks back and it took just over 2 weeks to get it in. Always nice to have a spare, just in case.

Another draw back is limited space for mounting any kind of AIO. You're limited to a maximum size 240mm rad and it'll have to be mounted to the front of the case. You can do a push/pull setup on a rad when it's mounted to the front of the case, but it does reduce the amount of space you will get for installing a GPU. Max GPU length for the case is 13", but an AIO and your fan setup for it will reduce the amount of space available to install a GPU.

 

[mplayerMuPDF]

Since we are talking about cases anyway, I have this one on my wishlist: Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full Tower. I would definitely do some more research (particularly on the exact dimensions) before actually buying it but it interests me a lot for sure. Going from 0 to 4 5.25" bays would be amazing.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Since we are talking about cases anyway, I have this one on my wishlist: Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full Tower. I would definitely do some more research (particularly on the exact dimensions) before actually buying it but it interests me a lot for sure. Going from 0 to 4 5.25" bays would be amazing.

That's a nice case! Lots of room for optical drives and more!

 

[neatfeatguy]

Since we are talking about cases anyway, I have this one on my wishlist: Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full Tower. I would definitely do some more research (particularly on the exact dimensions) before actually buying it but it interests me a lot for sure. Going from 0 to 4 5.25" bays would be amazing.

I've got my Fractal Design Arc XL tower, still. One big sucker. Has 4 5.25" bays on it, too. It has a built in fan controller for adjusting fan speed (I just let the 140mm fans run on high, they were quiet fans). Lots of room.

One thing I did with mine was I removed both HDD cages so they weren't in the way to restrict air flow. Then, in the 5.25" bays, the top two had optical drives and the bottom two bays I picked up a couple of 5.25" HDD mounting brackets and I installed the HDDs in the two bottom bays. On the back of the MB tray there is 1 (maybe 2, I forget now) spots to mount a SSD.

She's a nice full sized tower, but after using it for 4 years and having my 980Ti AMP! Omega installed, the GPU sag was on the verge of breaking the PCIE port. That's when I opted to move to the Cooler Master HAF XB Evo, no more worries about GPU sag. I also found that moving to this XB Evo I saw slightly better temps with the use of fewer fans. I was sold after that, so now I have 3 of the XB Evo cases.

I'd recommend getting one, but I think you'd be very hard pressed in find one since the model is no longer available. At least the Phanteks you linked reminds me a lot of the Arc XL I have, certainly would be a case I'd like to get if I was in the need of a full tower with ample 5.25" bays.

 

[Jacky_BEL]

I use an LG BP50NB40 external USB drive for most of my optical needs, due to the lack of 5.25" drives. It works great and it’s extremely helpful for my computers that don’t want to boot from a USB.

I was at Micro Center a couple years ago looking at their optical media, and stumbled upon this DVD-RAM drive for 5 bucks. I had heard of this type of disk and wanted to check it out but only later realized it was the early type that is in a housing. Unfortunately I do not have any drive that takes in these DVD-RAM cartridges but it’s still a very neat thing to have.

I have used these DVD-RAM cartridges on a Panasonic HDD-DVD video recorder.
At that time (XP-days if my memory serves me right) i had a DVD-RAM capable optical drive in my PC , so i downloaded the drivers for it , and use DVD-RAM discs on that PC.
I had also been looking for a 5.25" optical drive with a tray that could accept the cartridge-type discs , but never found one.

 

[Canned Noodles]

Found a couple of CD drives in my box of Sun hardware

what do you think the "FG" hole is for on the back of the IDE drive?

the top of the drives

this is the bottom of the SCSI drive (the bottom of the IDE drive was bare, hence the lack of a photo)

 

[Veseleil]

FG hole... Is there a button or a screw in it?

 

[Canned Noodles]

FG hole... Is there a button or a screw in it?

Looking with a flashlight, there definitely isn't a screw. I tried poking in a paperclip and didn't click or anything. It looks like a flat plastic surface... perhaps it's just a feature that wasn't implemented.

 

[GreiverBlade]

i have that one

can be useful sometime

also collections of various ODD (some IDE some SATA ) right side under the beer caps

(and one FDD in the red square ok fine ... rectangle... )

 

[Veseleil]

View attachment 271442

What kind of instrument is that? Something between sarangi and sitar?

 

[Steevo]

I have a Blu-ray drive to rip music and movies, to burn DVDs for work and MP3 CDs for older CD players. Plus I own a decent number of disc movies on BluRay and the upscale works well, haven’t tried 4K discs to see if they work, and we don’t have fast enough internet for 4K streaming unless I kick the kids off.

I have thousands of hours of music ripped in MP3 vbr or WMA vbr, unless I can sail the seas or buy a disc it’s usually streamed from somewhere. Not buying media unless I have a physical copy that I can make a clean copy of after losing close to 100 albums to DRM and at least a few movies and shows.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Heres mine.

Bought about 20 years ago. Used it a fair bit when i bought it but not so much now since windows and game installs are done via USB and steam etc etc. Not the fastest drive in the world but it gets the job done.

 

[mplayerMuPDF]

Bought one of these: https://www.startech.com/en-us/cables/sata2esata6 to use with the PSU that came with my https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/usb2sataide.
(which as you can tell from my sig I have been using with my SH-224DB) My Llano ProBook has an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, so now I have a way to connect drives natively (a big improvement over using a USB 2.0 adapter with the sketchy USB of my Ryzen desktop). Just tried it briefly and it seems to work. It just took me some time to realize that eSATA was disabled in the BIOS... Will do some further testing tomorrow.

 

[eidairaman1]

Found a couple of CD drives in my box of Sun hardware

what do you think the "FG" hole is for on the back of the IDE drive?
View attachment 271436View attachment 271437
the top of the drives
View attachment 271438View attachment 271439
this is the bottom of the SCSI drive (the bottom of the IDE drive was bare, hence the lack of a photo)
View attachment 271440

FG is known as Frame Ground (Chassis Ground)

I found a Manual for that unit, seems they were common in Dell's

Teac CD-532E CD/CDR Drive Manual PDF View/Download, Page # 3

View online Manual for Teac CD-532E CD/CDR Drive or simply click Download button to examine the Teac CD-532E guidelines offline on your desktop or laptop computer.

all-guidesbox.com

I Remember TEAC

I Still like Optical drives, I have 2 BDXL Burners in mine (Pioneer) from 2014 and My Lady has 1 from 2021

 

[GreiverBlade]

What kind of instrument is that? Something between sarangi and sitar?

it's a scaled down plywood hurdy gurdy (basically a playable 3D puzzle and no... it doesn't play optical disc ... )

Spoiler: .

Ugears Hurdy-Gurd: the world's first mechanical musical model for self-assembly and play

The Hurdy-Gurdy plays dancing melodies, from folk to modern, being the bridge between the medieval times and the present day.

ugearsmodels.com

 

[eidairaman1]

it's a scaled down plywood hurdy gurdy (basically a playable 3D puzzle and no... it doesn't play optical disc ... )

Spoiler: .

Ugears Hurdy-Gurd: the world's first mechanical musical model for self-assembly and play

The Hurdy-Gurdy plays dancing melodies, from folk to modern, being the bridge between the medieval times and the present day.

ugearsmodels.com

ELO anyone lol

 

[GreiverBlade]

ELO anyone lol

ELO, hello... elo?
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.
that Elo?

or that ELO?
ELO stands for Expanded Learning Opportunities. It is a 30 minute period of instructional time within the school day for students to receive individualized instructional support personalized to their needs.

well anyhow as i said, it does not play Optical Disc ... sorry for the off topic derivation

 

[lexluthermiester]

ELO, hello... elo?
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.
that Elo?

or that ELO?
ELO stands for Expanded Learning Opportunities. It is a 30 minute period of instructional time within the school day for students to receive individualized instructional support personalized to their needs.

well anyhow as i said, it does not play Optical Disc ... sorry for the off topic derivation

I think the reference was Electric Light Orchestra.

 

[GreiverBlade]

I think the reference was Electric Light Orchestra.

i thought of that one too ... but it's not electric and i did not see someone playing a HG in ELO ... or i am masively blind and need optical overhaul (see, still Optical ... although not disk )

 

[eidairaman1]

I think the reference was Electric Light Orchestra.

Thats right or Electric Light Organ

 

[mplayerMuPDF]

Reripped some Santana CDs yesterday with the SH-224DB connected to my Llano ProBook with its eSATA port, using a new program (for Linux/*nix) for the first time: whipper. Before I was using cdparanoia (directly, whipper also utilizes it but has many additional features) and I had to manually name all the tracks etc and nothing was tagged (which is a problem with music players that do not respect directory structure-based organization and rely solely on tags, like the stock BB10 music player, for example). Whipper pulls the tag information automatically from the Musicbrainz database and encodes the tracks to tagged FLAC files. Additionally, it compares hashes of your files to other rips to determine whether your rip is 100% accurate or not. I guess you could say it is an EAC equivalent for Linux, although I am not familiar enough with that program to state that it is a perfect replacement.

Overall, I would say it is a big upgrade over just using cdparanoia. Unfortunately, it was a hassle to install on MX Linux (Debian Stable based) because the pycdio dependency was not installed because it was no longer available in the Debian package repositories for some reason (even though whipper itself is). Luckily with my extensive experience with Linux and installing software written in Python (from PyPI) and other software from outside the repositories, I was able to get it to work. I installed pycdio from PyPI using the "pip3 install pycdio" command but pycdio itself has multiple dependencies so I had to install those manually from the Debian repositories (using "apt install"). I do not recall exactly what I had to install to stop pip from complaining about missing dependencies but it included the "swig" package and various "cdio" (including "dev" development packages containing header files) packages.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Reripped some Santana CDs yesterday with the SH-224DB connected to my Llano ProBook with its eSATA port, using a new program (for Linux/*nix) for the first time: whipper. Before I was using cdparanoia (directly, whipper also utilizes it but has many additional features) and I had to manually name all the tracks etc and nothing was tagged (which is a problem with music players that do not respect directory structure-based organization and rely solely on tags, like the stock BB10 music player, for example). Whipper pulls the tag information automatically from the Musicbrainz database and encodes the tracks to tagged FLAC files. Additionally, it compares hashes of your files to other rips to determine whether your rip is 100% accurate or not. I guess you could say it is an EAC equivalent for Linux, although I am not familiar enough with that program to state that it is a perfect replacement.

Overall, I would say it is a big upgrade over just using cdparanoia. Unfortunately, it was a hassle to install on MX Linux (Debian Stable based) because the pycdio dependency was not installed because it was no longer available in the Debian package repositories for some reason (even though whipper itself is). Luckily with my extensive experience with Linux and installing software written in Python (from PyPI) and other software from outside the repositories, I was able to get it to work. I installed pycdio from PyPI using the "pip3 install pycdio" command but pycdio itself has multiple dependencies so I had to install those manually from the Debian repositories (using "apt install"). I do not recall exactly what I had to install to stop pip from complaining about missing dependencies but it included the "swig" package and various "cdio" (including "dev" development packages containing header files) packages.

Loved cdparanoia in my Linux days, but yeah, manual tagging was a pain. I set up some VERY basic Bash scripts to make life a little easier, but it still required typing everything out. Should've gone whole hog and figured out how to parse Freedb data and feed it to my rename script.

 

[freeagent]

I have a black LG DVD burner in my 5600X system

It's a nice one too, but I haven't used it yet. It's top of the line 2012

I haven't had a CD drive since the Devils Own was quite popular

Now I have a bunch of small usb keys that I can't see very well in the dark.

 

[mplayerMuPDF]

I have a black LG DVD burner in my 5600X system

It's a nice one too, but I haven't used it yet. It's top of the line 2012

I haven't had a CD drive since the Devils Own was quite popular

Now I have a bunch of small usb keys that I can't see very well in the dark.

That 2012 LG is a lot better than what HL-DT-ST is manufacturing today. It may even be a superior (for burning, not for scanning or reading) Renesas chipset based drive.

Today I moved over my OWC Mercury Pro USB 3.0 enclosure (containing an LG WH16NS"40" (in all likelihood an SVC NS50 rather than a real NS40) to the location where my ProBook 645 G1 usually sits (when I am not using it at the dinner table) and charges (it was sitting on top of my Ryzen desktop before) so I can use it with that computer and its reliable (Renesas) USB chipset. I only had to install cdparanoia and swig manually from the repositories to get whipper working on Devuan Chimaera (also based on Debian Stable). Just popped in a CD to let whipper find the drive offset (required before you can rip) of this LG BD-RE (multi) drive.