CompuServe Messages

John… One thing to ad to your very informative message…I have an RCD1000, one of the first available in the U.S., and have had problems writing to t…cyanine (sic) CD-ROMs – about a 50% failure rate – while haveing no failures with the cyanine dye CD blanks. Finally the problem occured while I was demonstrating my setup to an engineer from Japan who works for the inventor of the t…cyanine dye. He took my problamatic CD (it had written successfully on a Windows machine and the file structure was readable under File Manager but the program witten to the disk would lockup the computer) and shipped it to their labs in Japan. The response back from the lab was that the Pinnacle (JVC) drive was out of Orange Book specs and was "over burning". In essence the laser was burning thru the T…cyanine dye and blurring the pits. It apparently didn't have that problem with the cyanine (thicker) dye. The Japanese engineers told me that JVC and Pinnacle were aware of this problem and that a "firmware" upgrade was available. Well I have attempted to get such a firmware upgrade from Pinnacle with no luck (three weeks trying as of today). I have called, FAXed and attempted to log onto their BBS all with no luck. It is incredible to me that they didn't contact me in the first place when they knew of this problem – it should have been an automatic recall or upgrade. I am even more upset that after weeks of trying to get a resolution to this problem I am still without a working writer. If some other user of the Pinnacle RCD1000 is having the same problem I hope this information helps. It cost me plenty to find all this out and is still costing me. I still like the writer and the software I just want these problems solved!!! By the way does anyone have a solution to the overheating problem with this drive. I am not sure if this related to the over burning or not. I have noticed that if I am writing a large number of CDs (well actually only over 5 or 6) in rapid succession that my Pentium 60 eventually locks up and when I eject the CD-ROM I am writing it is hot as blazes. ..Carl "It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all…."