Plextor Corp. has announced their PlexWriter 40/12/40S CD-RW drive, which is available as an internal 5.25-inch half-height drive or as an external drive.
It connects to Macs or Wintel systems via an Ultra SCSI (SCSI-3) interface, which delivers a burst transfer rate of up to 20MB per second. The PlexWriter 40/12/40S features 40X CD-Write, 12X CD-Rewrite, and 40X-max CD-Read. BURN-Proof technology prevents buffer underrun errors, so users can multitask during a recording session, according to Howard Wing, vice president of sales and marketing for Plextor.
The drive is compatible with Mac OS X and Mac OS 8.6-9.x., but you’ll need to purchase a third party a SCSI card for Mac models of recent years as they don’t have built-in SCSI ports. The Plextor drive reads, writes, and rewrites compact discs at a wide variety of speeds. The PlexWriter 40/12/40S features a 4MB data buffer and burst data transfer rates of 20MB per second synchronous, or 5MB per second asynchronous. It supports a variety of CD writing modes, including Track-at-Once, Disc-at-Once, Session-at-Once, Multisession, and variable/fixed packet writing.
The PlexWriter 40/12/40S (internal and external) also features Plextor’s self-test capability that’s offered on all the company’s high speed drives. This feature allows the Plextor drive to run extensive writes, reads and seeks to verify the correct performance of the drive without host CPU (central processing unit) intervention.
The PlexWriter 40/12/40S internal drive — which comes with CD-RW burning software from Roxio Inc. — is scheduled for shipment to distributors and resellers on January 15, 2003, at a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of US$249. The PlexWriter 40/12/40S external drive with Ultra SCSI interface, which also comes with Roxio software, is scheduled for shipment to distributors and resellers on February 15, 2003, and has a MSRP of $319.