and with external drives they need to run on USB2 usb1 sucks slow... forget about dma on external drives!
Trust me, USB 1.0 is slower than hell, took me over 3 hours to rip and copy a movie. Get a USB 2.0 card for your computer, it'll make your life much better.
Sounds like the computer I just replaced except mine had 512 megabytes of ram. Intel (single core) P4 1.7ghz speed. I had an internal Plextor DVD burner though. Max reliable speed was around 8x although I always burned my DVD's at 6x. New computer is a dual core 3 ghz machine with 4 gigs of ram. It'll burn 16x (with the Plextor I had in the old computer just fine although DVD infopro scans are still better at 12x. Multitask while encoding or burning? Nope, never with the old machine & I haven't tried it yet with the new one.
My do I own a dinosaur or what, I still have a PIV, 1.9 GHz, 1 Gig or RAM, burns great though at 12X.
Ha!Ha! You call that a dinosaur:~)! How about an AMD Athlon, 950MHz, 512 RAM! And having no problems burning @X12! Have a Nec ND-3550A with a mod. firmware from Liggy.
Hey if it works then hang onto it & use it!! I just wanted a faster computer since my other one was 5 years old....