Installation and Setup

It's SCSI

The PlexWriter 8/2/20 is a SCSI device, which is expected since it's a high performance piece of equipment, but I had a slight problem: I didn't have a SCSI card. What kind of SCSI card should I get?

Anyone who knows anything about SCSI will tell you that Adaptec makes the best stuff out there, but I was hesitant to spend $80 on an Adaptec SCSI controller just to support a single device. I decided instead to buy a $29 Tekram DC-315U SCSI controller. The Tekram DC-315U card doesn't have a SCSI BIOS -that means that I won't be able to boot off a SCSI device using the Tekram card. This won't be a problem because I don't plan on booting off a CD-ROM, or buying a SCSI hard disk any time soon.

Installation

I use Windows NT4 SP4 with my dual Celeron system, and installing the SCSI controller was fairly simple. I first installed the Tekram NT driver in the "SCSI Adapters" menu in the control panel. Then I physically installed the PlexWriter, making sure it was properly terminated.

SCSI driver

Windows NT automatically detected the PlexWriter as a new CD-ROM drive. I then installed the Plextor Manager 2000 and the Adaptec Easy CD Creator programs included with the drive. Everything worked perfectly.

Frankly I was surprised by how easy the installation was in NT. I was expecting trouble from the Tekram card, but the only error I encountered was a result of user incompetence -I forgot to plug the other end of the SCSI cable to the SCSI card.