Formac has dropped prices on its FireWire CD-RW and DVD-RAM drives. Formac 16x10x40 CD-RW is now available for $290, with a 24x10x40 version scheduled for release in mid-June. The Formac 9.4GB DVD-RAM drive now sells for $480.
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I ordered a 12x10x32 in February, Formac had some trouble with the company it used to ship the drive parts to the US, so US Customs sent the parts back 3 times before it got here. All in all, it took until the end of March to get the drive to me.
When it got here, the case door was broken, but they quickly and at no cost sent me a new one. The drive can be powered off the FireWire bus on most G4 towers, and the drive performed superbly, but I'm a cautious person, so I ordered the AC adapter for it. It took another 3 weeks to get that to me.
It works great, the drive is iTunes and DiscBurner compatible. I have not had any problems burning; no buffer under-runs; no shiny coasters; no disc rot.
The drive itself uses a Teac mechanism. It seems that drives that work great on PCs don't perform well on Macs, and vs. vrs. Teac's generally flake out on PCs, but it works superbly under MacOS (haven't gotten around to installing OS X yet... waiting for a second hard drive for that).
I've used Roxio Toast Platinum 5.0b6 (haven't been able to order the final version yet), and have burned many different formats, and all work great. To get VideoCD's to work on my Sony DVD player, I had to use CD-RW dics (which I generally dislike-- no point when the cost of CD's is $25 for a 100-pack).
I would definitely recommend Formac's CD-RW drives. It may take a little while to get one, but once you do they work like a charm.
What about the Formac Studio and its shipping problems? I pre-ordered the silver one on 03/02/01 and it still hasn't arrived. The sales rep keeps telling me that they are having supply problems, but the initial shipments started on 03/15/01 and this is 06/05/01! How bad can the supply be? Anyway, sorry to rant but... I do have their TV Tuner card and their SCSI card and both work great w/ no problems (however they were slow to ship both products also.)
It would complement my Cube and 15' flat panel screen like a charm. And you can't beat the price and speed.
I've got the Formac Teac 16x Firewire and received it in 2 days, undamaged, and works with iTunes, Toast Ti, and CD Burner....Very, very happy with it...
Anyone have experiences with Formac under X?
anyone know what size memory buffer the drives have? i looked at the specs on their website but didn't see it listed anywhere.
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dc
the tv tuner/video capture card is good with os 9 and updates have been consistant but they need to come out with os x ware for is asap.
The Formac units originally interested me becasue they said BUS POWERED, then their chart slowly changed over time to only reflect G4s. I have a G3 tower, a Pismo, and will soon have a new iBook. The only way I would buy one is if it works bus powered on what I have. I can read the chart at the web site as well as anyone. What I'd like to know is if anyone out there is getting consistently good results using it bus powered on a G3 powerbook or desktop. Help anyone?
I had to wait a long time to get my 16/10/40, and despite numerous calls to Formac, I never received any email updates about shipping delays. They made various excuses about problems with parts, promising the drive within a day (for about 3 weeks). I was ready to cancel the order when it arrived. It works well, I can't complain about the machine, but be aware...it's at least twice as big as it appears in the photo. It's bigger than my cube!!!
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Anyone willing to share personal experince with it. Is it Disc Burner/iTunes compatable?