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The retail box 1620 I purchased a couple of weeks ago included both an audio cable and a nice 80-conductor IDE cable.

I would guess one of three possible causes for your missing cable:

1. Difference between retail packages in the U.K. and the U.S.
2. Perhaps BenQ has recently stopped including the cables
3. Simple oversight when your particular drive was packaged, i.e. you were just unlucky.

My box does state that both cables are included, so if your box does not then it sounds like the cables were intentionally omitted and we can rule out possible cause number three. That leaves us with possible causes one and two. When was yours made? There should be a date code on the drive's label.

cfitz

november 2004

Mine was September 2004, so that doesn't rule out either of the possible causes. Maybe someone with a drive made after November 2004 can report if they received cables to clear up the mystery.

Either way, it seems that the cables were deliberately omitted from your box, and it wasn't a packing mistake. Sorry.

cfitz

it's ok i'll just buy the cables, and then i have to install it, that's a problem. i've got no idea how to do that. i'll take it to the local comp shop.

You don't need the audio cable at all. Just enable digital audio transfer (which XP will probably do by default - even if it doesn't it isn't hard to do yourself). And you may not need the IDE cable. Depending on what is already in your computer, you may be able to attach the new drive to an existing IDE cable in your computer. One IDE cable can support two drives.

cfitz

really, that's great, i've already got a cdrw and a dvd-rom on my pc, i am planning to remove the cdrw and put the benq in instead. so there will be an ide cable with the cdrw so i can just use that. thanx

That will work fine. Just make sure to set the IDE jumper on the back of the drive to the same setting as the CD-RW you are replacing. Good luck!

cfitz

i've gotta another problem. i am about to install the benq dvdrw but i don't which to take out. i have got a dvd-rom and a cdrw drive on my computer right now. which one shall i take out to put the dvdrw in. should i leave the dvd-rom because then i can copy dvd's?

Please help!

what are your CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives ?

what do you mean, my cdrw speed is 12x max (read) and rewritable speed is 8x i think. my dvd-rom is a hitachi. they both came included with the pc, and my pc is 3 1/2 years old

OK what i meant was, what brand/model and/or what speeds your drives were.
i take your answer to mean that your CD-RW drive is a 12x CR-R, 8x CD-RW write speeds?
and what is your DVD-ROM readint speed ?

generally, i would recommend you replace the CD-RW drive with your new BenQ DW1620 and kep the DVD-ROM drive.

(that is unless you have special needs or preferences you didn't mention.
such as: you want to copy a lot of CDs on the fly.)

my intended use is to backup data and maybe make some movie dvd's.
i only use my cdrw to make data cd's of photos and images. but now i want a burner to make data dvd's also to edit home movies etc and put them on dvd's

in this case i recommend you ditch the old (12x ? you didn't answer my questions) CD-RW drive, and install the BenQ drive instead, toghether with your DVD-ROM drive.

now you can use the DVD-ROM drive for reading CDs and DVDs, and your BenQ drive for burning CDs and DVDs. you can also copy CDs and DVDs this way.

I purchased my Benq DW1620 3 weeks ago and it did not include any cables (none stated on the box) mine was also November 2004.

I swapped my existing DVD player drive, slotted the cables from that into the Benq and it all seems to be working ok - all in all took about 5 minutes to do.

I found it hard to make up my mind whether to swap the DVD drive or the CDR drive - still not sure if I did the best thing, still it only takes a few minutes to swap the old DVD drive with the CDR if I thinks its necessary

well i don't know how to install the drive, so i'm going to ask the local comp shop to do it for me.

well, it's not really all that hard.
if you want to try it yourself and get some help here, why don't you start a new topic about it.

sure, i'll start one soon, thanks for your help

thanx for all your help guys, i have installed my dvdrw

CONGRATULATIONS!

enjoy your new burner.

well guys i've got another problem, i just tried to burn some data dvd's with sonic record now but it did not work, i just wasted a dvd like that. and then i tried it on a dvd rw and it worked but then i tried to copy it to another dvd but again it did not work.

the dvd-r i'm using is samsung 4x

the firmware is b7p9

any help guys

Use another burning program like NERO BURN. Congrats on installing your drive! Try using another brand of media like MAXELL, TAIYO YUDEN (FUJI), MADE IN JAPAN media is good to use. VERBATIM (MCC). Good luck! Check out the BENQ FORUM at cdfreaks.com.