Question

DIY CD Duplication Tower

Asked by: movemedia

Hi there..

I have been scouting through google all day today trying to find plans for building a CD Duplicator.  I have found none, but I have found a lot of sites SELLING duplicators.  I don't have that sort of budget however.  It would seem to me that what it would boil down to is getting a tower with enough drive bays:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=11-182-546&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

and a bunch of cheap cd-rw drives:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=27-106-822&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

and either getting a mobo / processor / RAM in some sort of RAID setup that would boil down to one firewire or usb 2.0 cable i can then connect up to my pc.  on slashdot, i saw a simular project done with hard drives:

http://vader.inow.com/~drbob/fwcase.html

OR - if i must - building a whole new computer optimized just for cd duplication.  I would really like to avoid doing this if possible, but if i must, i would only like to dedicate this to duplication.  that means, I want all parts of the system to be sub par, except for the items that are important to burning (mobo IO processor and ram i'm guessing)

either way, the system needs to be stable.  any idea of where to start?

Thanks in advance!
-Chris

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Asked On
2004-06-29 at 13:00:02ID21042352
Tags

cd

,

diy

,

duplicator

Topics

Miscellaneous Hardware

,

Hardware Components

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: CallandorPosted on 2004-06-29 at 18:52:01ID: 11431824

If you're packing all those drives in one case, I recommend that you replace the power supply with one that has a lot of current on the 12v line - here's my pick:

Enermax 460W power supply $82
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-103-443&depa=0

If you're going with simple, a dedicated computer with the drives is preferable to a complex Firewire setup that can be difficult to troubleshoot.  You don't need a RAID setup because hard drives are much faster than burners.  You will need additional IDE controllers, so plan on two PCI slots being taken, and use round cables to keep the air circulation going.

 

by: kiranghagPosted on 2004-06-29 at 19:13:49ID: 11431947

nero retail version supports multiple drive burning I guess.

instead of using IDE, you can use scsi for hard drives and cdroms. you can connect only 4 drives (hdd/cd) on standard systems. will additional cards, this can go up but not much.
with scsi you can go to higher units per system, depending upon the power supply you have. as said earlier, u certainly need bigger power supply.
but scsi is going to take the cost higher.

to save on hdds taking up controllers, you can buy a raid card and plug all your hdds to one of them. thus you will get redundancy as well as make other connectors free for CDROMS.

HTH

 

by: sciwriterPosted on 2004-06-29 at 19:28:32ID: 11431994

You are missing the CENTRAL part of a multi-drive CD duplicator -- that is the BIOS on the duplicator controller card (aka "motherboard?").  This BIOS has a dedicated function, which is to automatically duplicate from one rem. drive to the other, and chain them in sequence.  Unless you can program a BIOS chip to do this function, or reverse engineer an existing one and clone it (illegal) -- you do NOT have a stand-alone duplicator -- just a STACK of CDs/DVDs accessible (hopefully) remotely.  Even the remote access requires an intelligent BIOS set of functions to pull it off.  Look into BIOS code to see what I mean.

 

by: mrwildePosted on 2004-06-30 at 03:02:53ID: 11433909

I currentley run a cd duplication service with only 2 cd burners in my main machine. this will burn a full cd in 1 and half minutes. depending on how many cd's you need to burn will detrmine how many burners you require. the solution here is ide to firewire converters, find heaps on ebay, i know of a company on ebay that actually sells a tower with power supply ide-firewire converters suitable for for dirves of any type.
 The benefite of the fire-wire is that you an run upto 15 drives from one port in daisy chain(so i have read). i have not attempted this setup as yet as my system runs fine ( 2 x sony burners 1 on each ide as they can't by parrllell, each burner has to have it's own ide ). I have recentley purchased a external drive case for 3.5" hdd witch works well with fire wire and cost AUD$60. this can be dismantled and the internals used to create converters in a tower of your choice. I would go for the pre maid version. check out the link below
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=167&item=5104766831&rd=1
this i think may be the answer

 

by: movemediaPosted on 2004-07-01 at 10:18:09ID: 11449325

Thank you all for your help.  

I did a bit more research on this site and found someone answering a simular question.  they said you can actually just get a CD duplicator controller card, and connect the other drives to it.  perhaps that's what sciwriter is talking about?   I do like that idea, but i also like the idea of having my computer run the duplications in nero like kiranqhq has mentioned.

currently, i like the idea posted by mrwilde... are you saying that i can just pop drives into this thing and out will come a firewire connection?  it seems too easy =)  and with that firewire connect, will windows see it as 4 drives?  or one big CDRW mesh of drives?

-Chris

 

by: mrwildePosted on 2004-07-01 at 16:43:03ID: 11452927

windows will see it as four drives. you don't have to fil i with burners or all cdrw it can be one hdd, one dvd r/rw and 2 cd rw. firewire from your computer to the tower (hot swap) and they are there

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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