technology – Page 2 – Moisés Cardona

Changing the LiteOn iHAS524 Optical Pickup Unit, again

May 11, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 2 comments

Hi everyone,

Remember my previous post where I was talking about the LiteOn iHAS524 C and mentioned the different optical pickup units this model use across its different revisions? Turns out that the SF-DS1XD OPU used in the iHAS524 B was having trouble burning DVD+R DL, so I began my search for a used iHASx24 drive from the A revision.

On Friday, I got a used LiteOn iHAS124 A delivered. This model use the SF-DS19L OPU that all LiteOn iHASx24 use (x being a number from 1 to 6).

The LiteOn iHASx24 series are all the same, except that the iHAS224, iHAS424 and iHAS624 has the hardware for LightScribe burning, while the iHAS124, iHAS324 and iHAS524 doesn’t. Other than that, the hardware is identical but they have different firmwares. The capabilities between models are the following:

LiteOn iHAS124: Base model.
LiteOn iHAS224: LightScribe.
LiteOn iHAS324: SmartErase.
LiteOn iHAS424: LightScribe and SmartErase.
LiteOn iHAS524: LabelTag and SmartErase.
LiteOn iHAS624: LightScribe, LabelTag and SmartErase.

Basically they have a different firmware enabling LightScribe, LabelTag and SmartErase depending on the model you have. Even if you have a different model, the firmware can be crossflashed by using some tools and firmware. I will not be covering that here, but it’s good to know if you’d like to add some features to your drives. The only feature that depends on hardware is LightScribe.

My LiteOn iHAS524 has been with me since 2010, and it’s probably the best CD and DVD burner available given its ability to overspeed 16x media to 20x. It also has HyperTuning, Online HyperTuning and SmartBurn, which are essential features to burn media with great quality. This is why I still count on this drive as sometimes I like to store data on optical media.

The drive had its optical pickup unit changed to the SF-DS1XD some years ago because one CD broke inside the unit, damaging the original SF-DS19L. I also didn’t use DVD+R DL media, so everything was fine, until last week. It turns out that the OPU had problems burning the discs. Specifically, it had problems focusing on the second DVD layer, failing at 50%. This is why I brought the used LiteOn iHAS124 A drive.

Because this unit is an A revision unit, the hardware between the iHAS124 and iHAS514 is the same. I did changed the iHAS524 disc mechanism to the one from the iHAS524 C revision, with the exception of the OPU:

On both photos, the iHAS524 is on the left while the iHAS124 is on the right.

Here we can see the disc mechanism from the iHAS124 unmounted:

And the Optical Pickup Unit taken out of it:

I’ll be using this OPU in the original iHAS524 mount, so I placed it there:

And finally, here’s the disc mechanism attached to the iHAS524:

The OPU started working immediately. It is now loading discs faster and wasn’t making weird noises. I was also able to burn some DVD+R DL media without issues. I’ll be talking about that on another post, but for now, this is it.

Collaborating in the exhale project – Part 2

May 4, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Yesterday, I began working on my second collaboration for the exhale xHE-AAC USAC encoder. This time, I worked on adding an argument to print the software version on the console.

The above is the main software, printing its information as well as how to use it.

There was no option to print the version only. Ideally, I just wanted a way to print something like exhale version 1.0.3 .....so that I can easily parse it as I do with other tools like Opusenc and Flac. Because of this, I began working on adding this functionality.

The code that performs this will check if there is just one argument (actually 2, since the first one is the executable filename). It also checks if the argument is either -v or -V. If this is true, we print the software information to the user:

This is the result:

A very simple and minimalistic output. Thanks to this, I can parse it and use on tools like my upcoming exchale GUI:

This Merge Request was approved and merged and is ready to use for everyone. As for the GUI, expect it in the next couple of days!

Click here to see the Merge Request on GitLab.

My first GitLab contribution: exhale encoder

May 3, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Yesterday, I collaborated on the exhale xHE-AAC Audio Encoder to add compatibility to compile the project on MinGW on Windows.

The exhale project is an Open-Source xHE-AAC USAC encoder. It allows you to encode wave (WAV) files to M4A using this specific codec.

Originally, compilation on Windows was done using Visual Studio, and this worked fine, but when compiling it on MSYS2/MinGW, it gave some issues, specifically:

H:/repos/media-autobuild_suite/build/exhale-git/src/app/../../src/app/exhaleApp.cpp: In function 'int main(int, char**)':
H:/repos/media-autobuild_suite/build/exhale-git/src/app/../../src/app/exhaleApp.cpp:246:85: error: '_SH_DENYWR' was not declared in this scope
  246 |     if (_sopen_s (&inFileHandle, inFileName, _O_RDONLY | _O_SEQUENTIAL | _O_BINARY, _SH_DENYWR, _S_IREAD) != 0)
      |                                                                                     ^~~~~~~~~~
H:/repos/media-autobuild_suite/build/exhale-git/src/app/../../src/app/exhaleApp.cpp:320:100: error: '_SH_DENYRD' was not declared in this scope
  320 |     if (_sopen_s (&outFileHandle, outFileName, i | _O_SEQUENTIAL | _O_CREAT | _O_EXCL | _O_BINARY, _SH_DENYRD, _S_IWRITE) != 0)
      |                                                                                                    ^~~~~~~~~~
make[1]: *** [../makefile.base:112: ../../build/exhaleApp.d.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/build/exhale-git/src/app'
make: *** [makefile:18: all] Error 2

It also complained about fprintf_s, so some changes needed to be done on the code.

To solve the _SH_DENYRD not declared issue, we had to include the share.h header:

Next, to solve the fprintf_s issue, I surrounded this on an #if !defined block to check if we were compiling on MinGW. If we are, we simply skip this declaration:

After these changes were done, the software compiled successfully.

Next, I did some additional changes to the makefile.base file to allow the Media Autobuild Suite project to pass its CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS variable to exhale:

These changes got merged into the project.

My inspiration to add this tool to the Media Autobuild Suite came as a user requested this tool to be added to it. So, I worked on it and submitted a Pull Request, where I refined it further to apply some recommendations.

The Pull Request was merged into the suite and is now available for everyone to build and use.

Contributions

Verbatim 4x BDXL 100GB Blank Media

April 30, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Yesterday, I received my very first BDXL media. These are way more expensive than BD-R and about twice the cost of BD-R DL media.

For my first BDXL recordable media, I decided to get the Verbatim 10-pack spindle. These seem to be one of the lowest-priced media when compared to 3-packs or 5-packs variants of other manufacturers.

These BDXL discs are rated at 4x, but my LG WH14NS40 crossflashed to the WH16NS60 firmware detects them as having a write speed of up to 8x.

The Media ID is VERBAT-IMk-000.

On my Panasonic UJ260, these have a maximum write speed of just 2x.

I added files to burn using ImgBurn, and made sure to use the most space possible. I then started the burning process on my WH14NS14 at the maximum supported speed of 8x.

Añadí archivos a ImgBurn y me aseguré de llenar el disco lo más posible. Luego, comencé a quemarlos con mi LG WH14NS14 a la velocidad máxima de 8x.

It seems the drive use a Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity) strategy to burn these discs. The write pattern was as follows:

Layer 0: 4x -> 6x -> 8x
Layer 1: 8x -> 6x -> 4x
Layer 2: 4x -> 6x -> 8x

We can see the pattern below:

Some times, when the writing was at 4x, the drive would go down to 3.3x for about 1 second or 2:

The same happened when the drive was recording at 6x, going down to 5x for a second or 2:

The drive successfully burned this media, having an average speed of 5.7x:

Burning VERBAT-IMk-000 Average speed 5.7

Verification was slower than the writing itself, as it limited the read speed to 6x:

The verification was successful and no errors were reported:

The average read speed was 4.3x, slower than the 5.7x average when writing to it. It also seems that while ImgBurn set a read speed of up to 6x, the drive went all the way to 9x, according to the Maximum Verify Rate.

Here, we can see the written disc with its Z-CLV zones:

Conclusion

These discs seem to be compatible with the LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray writer. They also burn at a faster 8x speed which is more than its rated speed of 4x. The drive was able to successfully burn them and read them. These discs, while expensive, allow us to write up to 100GB (about 93GB of actual storage) on a single medium. It would have taken us 4 25GB BD-R or 2 50GB BD-R DL media to write an equivalent amount of data.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any BDXL scanner I can use to test the quality, but the media can be read back on the LG drive as well as on my Panasonic UJ260. The latter seems to read the disc in Z-CLV too, but it was able to read the data back successfully too. It is just slower than the LG drive.

If we compare the price of having 10x 100GB Blu-Ray discs to owning a 1TB Hard Disk Drive, we can see that the BDXL media is a couple dollars more:

The BDXL media on eBay (It was at $53.15 at the time of puchase):

On Amazon. They seem to have lowered the price to $49.99 at the time I took this screenshot:

The price of 1TB Hard Disk Drives on Amazon:

Ultimately, it all would depend on your needs. Personally, I like to write data that will not be used frequently on optical media, while having frequently-changing data on the discs. I’ve also had a bad experience of having Hard Drives fail, and while I’ve had optical media fail too (Some bad Blu-Ray batches that deteriorated in a couple of years), the data loss is not as much as losing a whole hard drive. Remember to back-up your data!

Upgrading the Lenovo Y720 RAM to 64GB

April 28, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 2 comments

Hi everyone,

I’ve recently upgraded my Lenovo Y720 RAM to 64GB. This laptop came with 16GB initially, but it’s very easy to upgrade it.

I was browsing Amazon and found that the Samsung 32GB DDR4 SODIMM modules were the cheapest available, so I went ahead and ordered 2 of them.

Upgrading it was as easy as removing the back cover:

We can see the 2x 8GB RAM modules installed in the laptop here:

Samsung 8GB x2 RAM Modules in motherboard

And here they are removed:

The part number is M471A1K43CB1-CRC.

We will be replacing them with 2x 32GB Samsung DDR4 SODIMM modules with part number M471A4G43MB1-CTD:

Here we insert them in the laptop:

Samsung 32GB x2 RAM Modules in motherboard

A vew of the laptop’s motherboard with the new RAM modules:

And it booted!

Here’s the Task Manager reporting the 64GB of RAM:

In CPU-Z:

While the RAM should go up to 2666Mhz, the laptop’s CPU only supports it up to 2400Mhz. It also seems that CPU-Z could not read the RAM details, as the SPD tab is empty:

The most important thing is that now my laptop has 64GB of RAM which will be plenty for a very long time.

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Front

The LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray Writer

April 27, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 3 comments

Hi everyone,

On Saturday, I received the LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray Writer Drive. This is my 3rd Blu-Ray writer and it will replace my LiteOn iHBS112 which was causing several bad burns. The other drive is the Panasonic UJ-260, which is a slim drive that burns discs successfully.

This drive is one of the cheapest Blu-Ray XL writers available on Amazon. It is also able to read and burn CDs and DVDs.

Here, we will see the drive unboxed and teared down.

Unboxing

The drive came in this simple box:

There’s no branding. Just a box with the part number printed on a label.

Opening the box we see the drive:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Box Opened

Just the drive. No cables or software are included.

The drive is protected in bubble wrap:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive in bubble wrap

Also also comes inside a plastic bag:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive in Plastic Bag

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive in Plastic Bag (Front)

Taking it off we see the drive itself:

Now, let’s take a look at the top, where we will find some useful information:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Top

The drive is the WH14NS40, with SVC code NS50. It was manufactured on January 2020 and comes with firmware 1.04:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Model, Firmware, and Manufacture Date

Finally, this is the drive with the tray opened:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Tray Opened

Teardown

We will begin the teardown by removing the 4 screws on the bottom:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Bottom

We can then remove the bottom cover:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Bottom Opened

Let’s take a closer look at the drive chipset:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Chipset

It is using a MediaTek MT1959HWDN chip.

Let’s now see the Eject Button, LED and Tray Motor board:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Tray Motor Board

A look at the bottom tray mechanism:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Internals

The internal tray loading mechanism and Optical Pickup Unit:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Tray Internals

A closer look to the Optical Pickup Unit:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive Optical Pickup Unit

And finally, here’s how the drive looks in my Desktop PC:

LG 14X Blu-Ray Writer WH14NS40 Drive in the Desktop computer

Drive Summary

This Blu-Ray writer can be crossflashed to the WH16NS60 16x variant. In fact, that was the first thing I did.

The drive is identified as HL-DS-ST BD-RW WH16NS60.

Here is the drive capabilities according to ImgBurn:

So far, I was able to successfully burn a BD-R with media code RITEK-BR2-00 and a BD-R DL with media code RITEK-DR3-000. Both discs were burned with ImgBurn and verified successfully.

Look forward as I test Blu-Ray media with this drive!

The LiteOn iHAS524 C

April 26, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 1 comment

Hi everyone,

In the past few days, I brought a LiteOn iHAS524 C DVD drive on eBay. This drive is quite rare and was being sold as used, but the unit seems to be in good conditions.

The reason to have this drive is due to its unique LabelTag feature. This allows you to create labels on the data side of a CD-R and DVD+/-R. It, of course, will consume space, but the advantage is that you don’t have to manually label the discs as long as there is enough storage. It can also be created as soon as the data is burned given you use Nero Express with the LabelTag software present.

I also currently have the LiteOn iHAS524 A, which had its optical pickup unit replaced with the one used in the B revision. They are compatible with the A units and have been working great. However, the C unit laser is NOT compatible with the A unit, and I guess the same is true with the B units.

Here, I’ll present you with a side by side comparison of the internals as well as its exterior photos.

LiteOn iHAS524 C External Photos

We start with the front of the drive:

As is usual with DVD drives, you get to see the CD and DVD logos; and because this drive also features LabelTag, it has the logo in the front too.

Here is a closer look at the top:

And the back:

This C unit was manufactured on August 2012.

LiteOn iHAS524 A Exterior Photos

Now, let’s take a look at the exterior photos of the iHAS524 A. This drive has been with me since its release in 2010, so it doesn’t have the same condition as the iHAS524 C:

Again, we see the CD, DVD, and LabelTag logos.

Here is the top:

And the bottom of the drive:

It has a missing screw which I lost some time ago when I replaced the drive optical pickup unit. This drive was manufactured on June 2010.

Side-by-side internals

Here, we will see the internals side by side. We will start with the top cover interior:

Now, a look at the drive’s inside:

LiteOn iHAS524 A and C Inside Side-by-side

Both drives looks almost identical, with a few diferences.

This is the iHAS524 B Optical Pickup Unit. The part number is SF-DS1XD. It is compatible with the LiteOn iHAS524 A and is the one it’s using.

LiteOn iHAS524 A Optical Pickup Unit (SF-DS1XD for B revision compatible with A revision)

And here’s the iHAS524 C Optical Pickup Unit:

LiteOn iHAS524 C Optical Pickup Unit (SF-DS1X1)

The part number is SF-DS1X1. It doesn’t have the small potentiometer on the lower left. Other than that, it looks almost the same.

LiteOn iHAS524 A and C Inside Bottom Side-by-side

The back also looks similar. The board from the A model is a bit bigger than the C model.

Here, we see both drives internals with the disc tray opened, giving us a better look at the reader mechanisms.

LiteOn iHAS524 A and C Inside Side-by-side With Disc Tray Opened

Unfortunately, the iHAS524 C Optical Pickup Unit is not compatible with the iHAS524 A. The drive refused to turn on, but it seems that what really happened was that there was a short circuit. This caused the ribbon cable to burn:

LiteOn iHAS524 A with the SF-DS1X1 Optical Pickup Unit

The iHAS524 A didn’t suffer any damage other than the burned ribbon cable. The SF-DS1X1 laser didn’t get damaged and the iHAS524C was able to work fine. After I made sure it worked, I placed its ribbon cable to the iHAS524 A and it started working with the SF-DS1XD OPU again. Phew!

Long story short, the SF-DS1X1 OPU is not compatible with the iHAS524 A. Use the SF-DS19L (The one that should be used in the A revision) or the SF-DS1XD (For B units, but also works with the A units).

This is the SF-DS19L Optical Pickup Unit which I replaced with the SF-DS1XD:

LiteOn iHAS524 A Optical Pickup Unit (SF-DS19L)

If you need one of these Optical Pickup Units, you can find them on AliExpress.

Ritek Mini CD-R: Part 2

March 22, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

Today, I burned a few more Ritek Mini CD-R media, where I found out they have a surface issue:

I didn’t realized this, but it seems to be a plant manufacture problem. I opened another of the 100-pack I have and it have the same problem.

The problem is that the data was burning fine, with no errors on my Lite-On iHAS524, but it failed to verify on some parts of the disk, as it was approaching the end. I was burning them at 24x, the maximum speed it supports on the writer.

I decided to use the Optiarc AD-7561A drive I have to see if it would burn fine with it, since slim drives usually burns at a lower speed.

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 10 — Optiarc AD-7561A

When the CD is inserted in this drive, it is detected as a 10x media:

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 1 - Optiarc AD7561A GH53

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 2 - Optiarc AD7561A GH53

I burned the CD with this drive, where it was able to both burn and verify successfully. It also seems that the drive burned surface is a bit darker than with the LiteOn drive, so maybe that makes it handle the bad surface better.

Quality tests

I burned 2 CD’s with the Lite-On drive where both burned successfully but didn’t read fine. One was able to read completely, but lowering the read speed at the bad section. The other one failed with unrecoverable errors.

Let’s see their quality tests with the LiteOn drive first, followed with the Optiarc drive:

CD #1 – LiteOn

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 1 Result 1 Burned with LiteOn iHAS524 BL2U at 24x

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 1 Result 2 Burned with LiteOn iHAS524 BL2U at 24x

This is the CD that was able to read completely but lowers the speed. When playing it back, it pauses while reading the wrong area. It can be ripped, but will struggle in the bad area. The ripped file appears to be fine, but EAC reports timing problems. Listening to the track didn’t revealed any issues.

You can see the excesive amounts of C1 and C2 errors.

CD #2 – Optiarc

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 2 Result 1 Burned with Optiarc AD7561A GH53 at 10x

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 2 Result 2 Burned with Optiarc AD7561A GH53 at 10x

Here is another burn of the same data, burned with the Optiarc drive and tested on the LiteOn drive. You can see that it only reports a maximum of 10 C1 errors and no C2 errors. The quality score is 99%. Same media, but burned on a different drive, at 10x speed.

CD #3 – LiteOn

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 3 Result 1 Burned with LiteOn iHAS524 BL2U at 24x

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 3 Result 2 Burned with LiteOn iHAS524 BL2U at 24x

This CD failed to test properly. Once again, you can see the excessive amounts of C1 and C2 errors. The positions of the C1 and C2 errors seem to match the ones of the previous LiteOn burn.

CD #4 – Optiarc

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 4 Result 1 Burned with Optiarc AD7561A GH53 at 10x

Pocket CD 97m15s17f Ritek Media 4 Result 2 Burned with Optiarc AD7561A GH53 at 10x

Here is another burn of the same data of the previous burn. You can see this time it was successful, with only a maximum of 8 C1 errors and a total of 19. Again, the quality score is 99%, which is the same as the other Optiarc-burned media.

Conclusion

As seen from the above tests, it seems the Optiarc AD-7561A drive can successfully burn these discs if we intend to use all of its capacity. Maybe it is because of the slower burning speed, or because the optical laser can burn them better than the one on the LiteOn drive.

The LiteOn drive can only burn these CDs at 16x and 24x, while the Optiarc can only burn them at 10x. I’ll test burning a disc at 16x at a later time and see if it works. If not, I’ll continue using the Optiarc drive, which has proven to burn them correctly and without any issues.

Ritek Mini CD-R Photos and Quality Tests

March 17, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 1 comment

Hi everyone,

Yesterday, I received some Pocket/Mini CD-R I purchased on eBay, which were being sold for cheap due to them not being branded or not having their specs listed.

The seller was selling 3 packs of 100 unbranded silver surface Mini CD-R, and since the price was lower compared to other branded media, I decided to buy all 3.

The discs were wrapped with no spindle.

The discs have a silver surface:

Here we can see a single CD-R:

They have the usual light green color on the data side.

The disc loaded fine on my LiteOn iHAS524 drive. I launched ImgBurn which says that the discs are made by Ritek. Their media ID is 97m15s17f:

They also have a capacity of 210MB or 24 minutes and a maximum write speed of 24x.

This is the first Mini CD I use with this LiteOn drive, which has the unique LabelTag feature to add labels to the data side. The software detected the disc and a label can be created:

I burned some of these CD-R with Nero Express, which allows the creation of the label on the same run. I also burned them at its maximum speed of 24x without any failure.

Quality tests

I ran a Disc Quality test using Nero DiscSpeed. Below you can see the results of those tests. I limited the test to the first session of it, as the second one is the label produced with the above software and contains unreadable data. This makes the test fail. By limiting it to the first session, we can get the actual data track quality.

Disc 1

The first test gave us a maximum of 14 C1 errors with a total of 58. The average was 0.11. There were no C2 errors reported. The Quality Score was 98%.

Disc 2

This test was perfect! No C1 or C2 errors were reported, making the Quality Score be 100%.

Disc 3

This disc had a maximum of 9 for the C1 Errors with a total of 13. The average was 0.07. No C2 errors were reported. The Quality Score was 99%.

Disc 4

This final disc I burned had a maximum of 13 C1 errors with a total of 27. No C2 errors were reported. The Quality Score was 98%.

Final Thoughts

These blank CD-R media seems to be good to write small amounts of data. This could be an MP3 album, some photos, or software you’d like to archive. The burns seem to be of good quality and the 24x burning speed is adequate. This sure was a great find on eBay!

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - 11

The M Way External DVD Drive Teardown

February 27, 2020 Moisés Cardona Comments 0 Comment

Hi everyone,

In this post, I will be tearing down the M Way External DVD Drive.

This is a slim external CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo drive that can read and write CDs but can only read DVDs.

Let’s begin with the teardown.

First, we must remove 2 screws that are found on the back to open the drive enclosure:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 1

We can then open the enclosure:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 2

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 3

We can see the DVD drive along with the board and USB Cable. We can also see that it seems that the USB cable is not actually soldered to the board.

Removing the DVD drive from the enclosure, we can see that the cable is in fact a Mini USB cable. This means the cable is not an actual USB 3.0 cable:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 4

The fact that the cable is not soldered to the board is good news for us since we could replace it if the original cable goes bad or we want to use another cable.

On the back of the drive, we can take a closer look at the USB board:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 5

Taking it off reveals a nice surprise:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 6

The board is a USB to PATA/IDE adapter. This is interesting and somewhat makes sense, since the drive is just a CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive, and back in the days, we could see tons of CD writers for laptops. It uses the Initio INIC-1511 IC.

Here, we can see the PATA/IDE conector of the drive:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 7

I decided to take off the sticker that it has on the top, revealing something more:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 8

The included TEAC DW-224E-C drive was manufactured in November 2005. This could mean they are recycling old DVD drives or using refurbished drives. If this is true, this is good news for the environment, since they are repurposing drives that are in working conditions.

Here, I have the original drive connected to my computer without the enclosure:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 9

Because the drive is basically an internal drive on an IDE to USB enclosure, we should be able to use it with other drives. I tested it with an old Optiarc AD-7561A drive. This drive is a CD/DVD writer with Lightscribe technology, which I haven’t used it for years:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 11

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - 12

When I connected the drive to the board, and to the computer, it recognized it without any issues:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - Optiarc Device Manager

And here we can see its capabilities as reported by ImgBurn:

M Way External DVD Drive - Colorful Flame Pattern - Teardown - Optiarc Capabilities

The Optiarc drive still works after a lot of years of not using it. This also means that we should be able to use other PATA/IDE drives with this particular USB board and exchange the original drive if it ever goes bad.

That’s basically it for this teardown. If you’re interested in getting this CD-RW/DVD drive, you can get it on Amazon here.