CD/DVD writers

Supported drives

To the best of our knowledge, all CD/DVD writers currently being manufactured are designed to conform to the MMC2/3/4 specifications, and commonly use the ATAPI/IDE interface (note, however, that ATAPI/IDE writers may also be accessed through a SCSI interface by use of a SCSI-to-IDE converter).

Because ExtenDOS 4 is written to these specifications, it should support all current drives. However, differences in firmware implementations may cause problems, so you may wish to refer to Tested MMC2/3/4 drives when choosing your drive.

ExtenDOS 4 also supports ATAPI/IDE drives that comply with ATAPI revisions 1.2 and 2.6, SCSI-3/MMC-compliant drives, and some SCSI-2 drives.

All supported drives provide the following features:

bulletcan read single-session photo CD discs
bulletcan read multisession photo CD discs, and backup CDs created by CDbackup
bulletcan extract audio from audio CDs in digital form

The Notes column in the following tables show the additional features available for each of the supported drives, plus any warnings or restrictions.

Tested SCSI-2 drives with recording support

The following drives have been tested and verified to work correctly as recorders with ExtenDOS 4.

Drive Notes
HP 4020, 6020 R
Philips 522, 2000 R
TEAC CD-R50S, CD-R55S R
Yamaha 100, 102 R

Untested SCSI-2 drives with recording support

The following drives are believed to work correctly as recorders with ExtenDOS 4; however, these drives have not been tested.

Drive Notes
Grundig 100 R
JVC 2001, 2010, 2020, 2626 R
Kodak 225, 600 R
Philips 521, 2600, 3600 R
Pinnacle 1000, 5020, 5040, 4x4 R
Pioneer S114X, 504X R
Plasmon 4100 R
Plextor R24 R
Ricoh 1420 R
Smart and Friendly 2006+, 4012, 226 R
Taiyo Yuden 180 R
Traxdata 4120 R
Wearnes 632 R

Untested SCSI-2 drives with read support only

The following drives are supported as CD-ROM drives only; CD recording will not work on these drives at this time.

Drive Notes
Smart & Friendly 2004, 2006  
Sony 920, 924, 926, 928, 948  

Tested MMC & ATAPI drives with recording support

The following MMC and ATAPI drives have been tested and are supported by ExtenDOS 4. Please see the Notes column for any warnings or restrictions.

Drive Notes
Acer 2x2x6 R W 2
HP 9600se R W 1
Mustek 121032 R W
Panasonic 7502 R W
Plextor 4/12, 8/20 R
Plextor 4/2/20, 12/4/32, 12/10/32(ATAPI) R W
Ricoh 7040S, 7060S R W
Sony 145 R W
TEAC CD-R56S-400/-600, CD-R58S R
Traxdata 2260 (Yamaha 2260) R W
Traxdata 2600 (Yamaha 200) R
Yamaha 200, 400 R
Yamaha 2260, 4460, 2216, 4416, 6416, 8424, 8824, 2100 R W 3
SCSI-3/MMC-compliant recorders R 4
SCSI-3/MMC-compliant rewriters R W 4
ATAPI/IDE v1.2/v2.6 recorders R 4
ATAPI/IDE v1.2/v2.6 rewriters R W 4
MMC2/3/4 writers D 4

Notes
R: Can record on CD-R disks.
W: Can record and erase CD-RW disks.
D: Can record CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R disks and record/erase CD-RW, DVD-RW disks, as supported by the hardware and application software.
1: These drives have not been tested by Anodyne Software, but are reported to work satisfactorily with ExtenDOS by one or more of our users.
2: This drive has a firmware bug that causes system hangs when writing large amounts of data per I/O. Use the "limit data transfer switch" of ExtenDOS 4 to bypass this problem.
3: The Yamaha 6416 (and possibly other drives in this group) has a firmware bug that causes CDDA data to be returned out-of-sequence when reading large amounts of data per I/O. This can occur when copying an audio CD track to a hard disk using the WAV files that represent audio tracks. Use the "limit data transfer switch" of ExtenDOS 4 to bypass this problem.
4: ExtenDOS 4 implements the MMC and ATAPI standards to communicate with compliant drives, so any drive that follows these specifications should work with ExtenDOS 4.

If you're not sure whether a specific CD/DVD writer is compatible, or if you have any updates to our compatibility lists, please contact Anodyne Software.

Last updated 20 December 2006 by Roger Burrows