MicroSolutions Backpack CD-Rewriter

Date: 24th February 99 by CPU-ZILLA

- The Good - The Test - The Bad - Conclusion - Rating - Other Rreviews

Micro Solutions have been in the business of providing solutions for storage devices since 1983. This US-based company has certainly come a long way in developing portable parallel port storage devices since it first introduced the world's first parallel port tape drive in 1991. Since then, they have been busy developing external portable storage devices for mobile users. Thus, there is no doubt that Micro Solutions has become a pioneer and industry leader for parallel port mass storage products. Now, they are back with another first in the parallel port storage arena, the first 4x CDR drive. According to them, this drive incorporates a new chip technology which allows the drive to write at 4x speeds on virtually any Pentium or Pentium equivalent PCs. This would allow you to "burn" an entire CD-R in just about 20 minutes. This surely beats the HP Surestore 7200e in terms of speed. However, the maximum writing speed for CD-RW is only 2x (which would take you about 40 minutes to fill up an entire CD-RW).

 

When I first opened the package, I was surprised to find that the drive looked exactly the same as my Yamaha CRW4260tx CD-RW drive. We contacted the supplier and they confirmed that it was really a Yamaha drive. I then proceed to inspect the drive with the hope of learning a little bit more of the interface. As we all know, Yamaha drives are normally made with SCSI2 or E-IDE interface. Unfortunately, there was no way of sniffing out the exact drive interface unless I open up the casing. Anyway, I suppose that Micro Solutions used an E-IDE or SCSI-2 to parallel port converter for the drive. Knowing that the drive is actually a Yamaha CD-RW drive in disguise is enough excuse to stay up late to make a music CD for my trip to work the next day.

However, one wonders why Micro Solutions have not moved on to using the USB port as an interface. USB does offer a lot more advantage over the standard parallel port, and also a wider market (which includes millions of Macintosh users). I guess the parallel port is intended to be backward compatible with older PCs and notebooks.

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The Good

As mentioned above, the Backpack CD-Rewriter is actually a Yamaha CRW4260 rewritable drive in disguise. Yamaha has been well known to produce drives with exceptional quality and accuracy. So far, I have never encountered any compatibility issues with my Yamaha drive even when I write on cheap OEM disks at maximum speed. Another plus is the generous 2MB buffer. It offers a better prevention against buffer underruns.

Installing the drive is as easy as plugging in your monitor. Even without reading the provided instructions, one could easily figure out where the plug goes (it is the same as an external parallel port Iomega ZIP drive). And before you know it, you're ready to make new CDs.

Let's see how this drive performed in my tests....

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The Test

Several tests were performed on various machines with different processor speeds. All tests were done using a writing speed of 4x. The system configurations for the tests are shown below.

Test System Configuration
	Config. I	Config. II	Config. III
Processor	Pentium II-300	Pentium II-300 (DELL XPS D300)	Pentium MMX-120Mhz (underclocked)
RAM	128MB PC100 Hyundai SDRAM	128MB SDRAM	80MB EDO DRAM
Motherboard	Elite P6BX-A+	LX chipset (DELL motherboard)	HX chipset (DELL motherboard)
Hard Drive	IBM Deskstar 8 - 6.4 GB	Western Digital 3.2 GB	Western Digital 3.2 GB
Operating System	Windows 98 Build 4.10.1998	Windows NT 4 Server Service Pack 4	Windows NT 4 Workstation Sevice Pack 4
Software Used	Adaptec Easy CD Creator	Adaptec Easy CD Creator	Adaptec Easy CD Creator

As you can see from all my test configurations, I chose slower computers since this will really show the true drive capability. CPU utilization for parallel port devices are known to be rather high, and this will really stress the drive when used with a slow processor. As expected, all the tests ran smoothly without any hitch. CPU utilization was about 65% for both Windows 98/NT. However, the CPU utilization of the underclocked Pentium 120MHz MMX was almost at its maximum at 95%. You could see the computer was working hard to deliver the required data to fill the drive buffer. I suppose running this drive on a Pentium 100 machine should be fine, as long as the hard disk is reasonably fast and properly optimized (e.g. defragmented).

The disks I created were free of problems. I even used the disks on my brother's faulty (which he claims to be fussy) CD-ROM drive and it posed to be error free. I must say that I am a quite impressed at the performance and accuracy of this drive.

However, I did ran into some problems during the tests. I find that making a CD from files directly from a network file server (under Windows NT environment) was almost impossible, even on a PII-300. But, I attributed this problem to the CD-writer software rather than the drive itself. This is most undesirable, since backing up files would require you to copy all the files into the local hard drive first. This is really troublesome since you would need to have at least 650MB of free space in your hard drive. I find this very inconvenient especially for business/office users.

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The Bad

Since the drive is actually a Yamaha drive in disguise, one wonders if the drive BIOS (or firmware) is flashable. As for my Yamaha drive, firmware updates are possible and they can be obtained from the Yamaha website. However, since this is a parallel port implementation, the situation is a lot more different. When I checked the recorder properties in the Easy CD Creator software, I found that the drive was using the older firmware. And in addition, firmware updates were nowhere to be found in the Micro Solutions website. This is bad, as firmware updates are necessary for bug fixes.

As with most parallel port devices, they are seldom friendly to the Windows NT environment. I remember some time ago, the external Iomega ZIP gave me the blue screen of death in Windows NT during bootup after disconnecting the drive from the computer. The problem with Windows NT is that it detects all the hardwares and peripherals during bootup, and if it fails to find it, the computer may just fail to work until the missing device is reconnected to the PC. However, such problems would not occur if the drivers were properly implemented. Anyway, I have not tried the new Iomega ZIP drivers on my Windows NT, so I shall not comment further. Hmmm...where was I? Ah, the backpack CD-rewriter drivers did give me some problems when Windows NT was rebooted without the drive connected. However, I didn't get the blue screen of death, but an error message popping up during the login screen. This is quite annoying, as you have to remove the driver after you have disconnected the drive from the PC. This problem does not occur in Windows 98.

The total weight of the drive (including the universal power supply and data cable) is more than a whopping 2kg. I find that a little too heavy, especially when you are always on the move. Also, you must always remember to use the transportation pad, otherwise the drive may be damaged. I find this rather inconvenient.

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