Here we go today with several interesting news about Plextor based (12/10/32) CDR-W drives:

1) Enable SubChannel Data reading in PLEXTOR/CREATIVE/TDK/IOMEGA 12/10/32 CDR-W drives:

If you facing problems when try to read SubChannel Data with your Plextor based recorder there might be a solution for you. All the above drives have 2 jumpers next to the digital audio out. If you jumper them then you drive would recognized as UDMA33 and probably it will start reading SubChannel data. We tried it in our TDK CyClone 121032, which refused previously to read SubChannel data, and worked fine with latest CloneCD (2.8.4.2).

This is the official Plextor answer about jumper the drive: "...The "Reserved jumper" (2 horizontal pins next to the digital audio out) is used for testing during production. If these jumper pins are shortened, some PC motherboard will work at Ultra DMA-33. But we do not guarantee the working..."

So if you face SubChannel problems please try the above trick and report back results.

2) Rename your IOMEGA/TDK/.. 121032 CDR-W drive to Plextor one:

Our good friends over Round Sparrow have released interesting info about converting the ID of your Plextor based recorder to "Plextor". Why you would like to do that?

As the people over Round Sparrow say: "...if you have to ask, then you likely should not. Only people who have incompatible burning software programs should even consider it! 98% of users do NOT need to do this. Experienced computer "hackers" are the ones this information is intended for -- now new computer users. The Iomega CD recorder works fine for 98% of applications without the name being changed..."