detail information

Let's first check out the contents of the European Plextor PX-W4012S retail package. In the box Plextor Europe send to us we can find the following things:

• The Plextor PX-W4012S drive itself
• Quick installation guide
• Warranty RMA procedure manual
• Warranty registration card
• Audio cables
• Emergency eject pin
• Four extra jumper caps
• Mounting screws
• Nero Burning Rom 5.5 disc containing;
  • Ahead's Nero Burning Rom
  • Ahead's NeroMediaPlayer
  • Ahead's InCD
  • Ahead's UDF Reader
• PlexTools v1.18 disc including 16-language manual
• One blank 48X 700MB Plextor CD-R
  (manufactured by Taiyo Yuden*)
• One blank 10X 650MB Plextor CD-RW
  (manufactured by Ricoh*)

As always the European retail package of the Plextor recorder is very complete. You get everything you need to get started right away. The manual of the Plextor drive can be found on the PlexTools disc and is very complete and in many different languages.

Plextor has included a printed quick installation guide and a printed manual on how you should proceed when you have problems with your drive. For Europe, The Middle-East and Africa, Plextor Europe offers a two year warranty on the drive as they do for all their new writer models.

Installation:

Unlike the normal IDE interface the SCSI interface has more options that can be used. An IDE CD-recorder can normally be set to either Master, Slave or Cable Select via the jumpers on the back of the drive. With SCSI this is not the case. This Plextor Ultra SCSI CD-recorder has no less than eight jumpers on the back:

• PIN 1-3 are used for the drive's SCSI-ID. By default the Plextor drive is set to ID 4. If your operating system does not support Plug and Play (like Windows NT 4.0) and you have other SCSI peripherals connected to your SCSI controller card, you need to check whether one of these is not already using SCSI-ID 4.
• PIN 4 is the parity jumper which should always be left on. The parity check enhances the reliability of the SCSI bus without effecting performance.
• PIN 5 is the terminator (no, not the movie with Arnold..) jumper. This jumper must be set to on when the PlexWriter is the last drive in the internal SCSI-chain or when it's the only drive.
• PIN 6 is a test jumper which is for factory use only.
• PIN 7 is the block size jumper which should be set to off unless you're working in a UNIX environment.
• And last PIN 8 is for the SPDIF setting. When your sound card supports digital sound and is fitted with a SPDIF connector you can connect the PlexWriter to it.

A big advantage of SCSI is that because it puts less strain on your system while in use, it's an ideal set-up when you want to use multiple burners. These drives can then be set-up in a so-called 'daisy chain' and this set-up will be ideal for companies and professionals who require to copy several discs at once. In our test computer the PlexWriter is the only SCSI drive so we won't be testing such a set-up. The PlexWriter is using the default factory set-up (PIN 3, 4 and 5 are on, the others are off).

The Drive:

As you can see from the screenshot the PlexWriter 40/12/40S is available in both a grey and a black edition. On the front of the drive we can first of all find the PlexWriter logo with the supported speeds. Besides that we have a BPRec (Burn-Proof Recording) logo and a 'High Speed CD ReWriteable' logo. Besides the normal headphone jack, emergency eject hole and volume control dial, we have four LEDs:

1. Disc indicator which turns green when a disc is inserted in the drive.
2. On/read indicator which shows a green light when the power is turned on and flashes when data is being read from a disc.
3. Low-speed write indicator which flashes orange when a CD-R is being written at a speed between 1x and 24x or when a CD-RW disc is being written between at a speed between 4x and 10x.
4. And of course a high-speed write indicator which flashes orange when a CD-R is being written at a speed between 32x and 40x or when a CD-RW disc is being written at a speed of 12x.

That's not all. On the drive we can also find an audio CD play button. When you insert and audio CD in the PlexWriter you can start it with the play button. You can also use the same button to skip to the next track or to fast forward the CD. Last but not least the drive of course also has an eject button which also functions as a stop button when an audio CD is inserted in the drive.

The Software:

As already briefly mentioned when we listed the package contents, this European Plextor drive includes the same software as we can find in other European retail packages. First of all we have the Nero Burning Rom v5.5 disc which really doesn't need an introduction anymore. Nero Burning Rom, by many people, is considered to be one of the best software packages around when it comes to your CD and DVD burning needs.

Ahead's InCD is of course also located on the Nero 5.5 CD-ROM. InCD is Ahead's packet writing software to use with your CD and DVD ReWriteable discs. With this software you can format a CD-RW or DVD±RW disc and use it as a large floppy disc. InCD also supports the 'Mount Rainier' (CD-MRW) format which we'll get back to later in our review. Other small tools located on the Nero 5.5 CD-ROM are the NeroMediaPlayer and the UDF Reader.

Plextor PlexTools is another well known program and is delivered with European Plextor CD-writers. The PlexTools software has come a long way since its first introduction and can nowadays be used to create both audio and data compilations with. Besides that the software has some advanced features such as 'DAE Error Recovery' and advanced settings to control your Plextor drive with:

For more information on some of the advanced features of Plextor's PlexTools software please read our small review on it.

Introduction

Features