#NEC CD-ROM upgrade
11 messages in this thread
I purchased the NEC Gallary late last year with the external 74
reader. Now I see that the NEW 74-1 is out and it can read the Kodak
CD-ROMS. I also recall someone telling me that the reader I have can
be upgraded. Does anyone know how to go about this and what the cost
might be?
Thanks in advance for any help you may provide.
Bob
I heard from NEC Germany that they changed even hardware and no
firmware upgrade is possible. I' frustrated that it seems I have to
throw away my CDR 84 now, which I bought end of last year. But I
still hope to get better new asap. Raimund
Bob,
I recently upgraded my NEC CDR-74 to the new CDR-74-1 version. The upgraded
version is now Photo CD mutisession compatable (yours is single session only,
but will read Phodo CD discs), has a 256 byte data cache compared to 64 in the
old version, and uses SCSI 2 protocols.
The new drive is somewhat faster than the old. Playing Quicktime movies (I use
a Mac) directly from the CD is where I notice the speed increase the most. It
was the multisession capability that convinced me to upgrade though. I put all
my photos on Photo CD. In my opinion the upgrade wouldn't be worth it if all
you were looking for was a performance increase. That's because the cost is
steep-$249. To upgrade you must send your old unit back to NEC in Wooddale, IL
near Chicago. I got around mailing it in by driving directly to NEC Wooddale
and making the exchange in person. I only live about 50 miles from there. Hope
this helps.
Greg Hendrickson
Bonfield, IL
Greg, Thanks for the info. Yipes! $249 bucks to upgrade my unit that's less
than 6 months old! I hope someone from NEC is reading this, what's the idea
guys. Bob
Bob,
NEC's position is this:
They are not upgrading your existing drive, they are actually swapping your
existing drive for a brand new one. They require you to return all materials
from your original package (cables, drive, caddy, manual, etc…). They
then refurbish your drive and resell it to a third party.
So they claim you are getting a new drive at a great price. Now this is a
highly debatable claim. Since most people will never use multi-session
capabilty (any purchased ROM will probably always be single sessioned), and
SCSI-II does little for CD ROMs about the only thing you are getting is a
slightly larger cache (64k to 256k).
Does this seem like its worth $250? I don't think so. I am sure NEC will
have a new faster model out later this year. The Toshiba 3401 is a faster
drive with better throughput for a cheaper price. For less than $200 more
than the upgrade price you can purchase a Toshiba. You might be better off
selling the NEC and using the money to purchase a Toshiba instead.
The only reason NEC rushed the 74/84-1 to the market was because they were
getting alot of requests for multi-session capability. I don't think it was
really a planned model in their line. Its too bad as most people don't need
multi-session capabilty to start with and is causing market confusion.
I look for NEC to announce a 200ms drive (like the Toshiba) with a 300k/sec+
transfer rate later this year. You can purchase those right now from Toshiba
but they can be hard to find.
NEC does make high quality products. The NEC CDR-74 is not a bad drive. I
would not upgrade it if I were you.
Jay Cahow
Cahow Consulting
Jay,
Thanks for the info. Do you know if my NEC 74 can read the kodak CDs? I'd
like to explore this option but would hate to develop a roll, buy the KODAK
software, etc.. to find out my reader can't read.
Once again, thanks.
Bob
Bob,
Sorry for taking so long to reply (I don't haunt this forum much
anymore). To the best of my knowledge all CDR-74 drives are single
session capable and the new CDR-74-1 are multi session capable. In
order to read Phote CD's you will need driver version 2.36 which can
be found on NEC's BBS.
Some early CDR-74 drives (like mine) had a memory chip problem which NEC will
fix for free. Its symptoms are banding of the displayed images.
Jay Cahow
Cahow Consulting
Jay, could I obtain the phone number for NEC's BBS? Thanks.
Does anyone know if this upgrade will work with a NEC 84J bundled with a
MediaVision ProAudio 16 card with SCSI connector? Like most of the other
people on this string of messages I bought the 84 late last year (Xmas). I
actually sent it to NEC (at their cost) and they upgraded the hardware to read
Photo CD, but not multi-session. Like others, I thought that would be fine.
Now I don't; I've got several photo CDs that I can't add pictures to and still
get them to read.
So, my question is will NEC swap this drive, and, if so, will the ProAudio SCSI
still work or will I need a new, separate, SCSI card???? If anyone knows,
please drop me a message (NEC are you out there?).
Richard,
A NEC CDR-84 can be upgraded by NEC for $229.00 to physically handle multi
session Photo CDs. The other part of the equation though is having a driver
that supports multi session capability.
Since you are using a MediaVision card (which I don't have) I would presume
they are supplying the driver. If their driver does not support multi
session capability I doubt the NEC upgrade would do you much good (unless
you got a different controller/driver) combination.
If MediaVision has an ASPI driver for their card you could use a third
party driver like CorelSCSI to get multi session capability.