Traxdata 4600
Supplied in a standard
clip-together external box, the Traxdata is
basically a rebadged Yamaha 400 drive. This is a
tray loader, but one with a rather odd flap at
the front, and a very flimsy tray that takes an
absolute age to come in and out. But at least the
front panel has a separate on and read/write
light! Give this drive a lot of big chunky
buffers, because it flies through the data. There
isn't much point in having a 4-speed drive unless
you have the memory to give it a decent buffer
size, and we would recommend about 8Mb. The drive
itself has a 2Mb buffer, which is double what you
normally get in a CD-R.
This drive, which is based on the Yamaha 400T
(a firm favourite amongst MakeCD users) offers
superb value for money, giving the same (if not
slightly faster, thanks to a larger buffer) write
speeds as the TEAC at a lower cost. And it reads
at 6x!
One final note, be sure to get one with the
latest version of the firmware (1.0g is the
current one). You can update the firmware later,
but as Yamaha only supply the transfer software
for Macintosh and Windows machines, you will have
to run an emulator to do it on your Amiga.
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