DVD Burner, Hearing, Etc

[sark1127]

I think I want to buy a DVD burner for my PC: preferably external; I don't currently have a firewire port, but that shouldn't be too expensive to get if I can find a good price on a firewire burner. Internal is not out of the question, but it'd take some fooling around (I'm not a hardware person, and I still can't figure out how to tell my

Comments

[ah42]

zipzoomfly.com, tigerdirect.com, cdw.com are ones i've used for a long time, although I think CDW is more expensive than the others (It's been several years since I've done any major computer purchases)

It's also worth comparing: sometimes it's cheaper in the end to buy something from a brick-and-mortar storefront like Staples, once you factor in shipping and handling.

Disabling the floppy check should be easy... when you reboot nexttime, go into the BIOS setup (Usually, there's a message saying something like "Hold down Delete to enter Setup...")

You might have to look around a little bit, and be careful not to fiddle with settings you don't understand! But there's almost always an option for disabling the floppy drive.

Sad to hear about the surgery :(

[rthecuban]

Hooking up an internal burner is nice and easy, once you've got the case open. : ) Also, internal drives tend to be a lot cheaper.

There should be just two cables that you need to connect - power and data. Power is a four-stranded cable (red/black/black/yellow) that can only be plugged in one way, so it's pretty hard to mess up - there should be a couple of extra plugs hanging around inside.

Data cable is also easy (and only fits in one way) - but you should check to see if it's an IDE or SATA type (if your computer is more than a year old, it's probably IDE) -- they're easy to distinguish because the IDE cable is about two inches wide, while the SATA cable is less than half an inch. All you have to do is make sure that the drive you're purchasing has the same type of interface.

[ah42]

Oh man, I remember being so glad when they finally started keying all the IDE cables. They used to make cheap reversable ones, and I had many a frustrating night troubleshooting, only to wake up the next morning and remember all I needed to do was follow pin 1 through the cable.