In article ,  says...

Gudmundur wrote:
Hi folks,

Problem is this, My old Panasonic CF-41 laptop works great with
my GPS/APRS goodies, but the internal cd drive doesn't seem to
want to read CDR's. This was a common problem with older 4x and
slower drives. I suspect the internal drive is a 4 speed and working
to original specs perfectly.

Have you found any CDR's that consistantly seem to work with old
drives?

I can't say 100%, but I've had good luck with the following techniques:


Sorry I did not explain better my meaning. This unit does not 'burn'
cd's at all, and I wasn't looking to do that. I have burned the CDR's
on my big computer and want to read them on the laptop, and the laptop
refuses to see most CDR's. It seems to read some of my older sony cdr's
however. They are shiney silver color, and it would make sense that
those are readable. Burning at 1X on my big computer seems to help.
The CDR's made on the big computer are 'good' if you want to say that
as everyone else with 8X or faster drives can read them fine.

Just looking for a more easily 'readable' CDR that my old laptop
may find easier to deal with. The laptop reads store bought 'master'
CD's just fine, music or data, it's the less reflective CDR surface
that trip this thing up.

In article ,
Gudmundur wrote:

Just looking for a more easily 'readable' CDR that my old laptop
may find easier to deal with. The laptop reads store bought 'master'
CD's just fine, music or data, it's the less reflective CDR surface
that trip this thing up.

You might want to try to find a supply of older-chemistry blanks which
are designed to be burned at speeds no greater than 4x or so, or even
the specialized "audio CD recorder" blanks (some of these are
optimized for burning at 1x). I've heard reports that these may have
a stronger recovered-signal level than newer high-speed blanks do
(thicker dye layer in the old variety??).

I've generally had good luck with Taiyo Yuden blanks. Used to like
TDK a lot - their "metal-stabilized cyanine" media seemed to be quite
good - but they seem to have stopped making their own blanks and are
OEM'ing from companies like Ritek.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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