| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 4710.1 | Keep us posted if you try it! | BOMBE::MOORE | Amiga: Where 'multimedia' REALLY began | Fri Apr 26 1991 16:54 | 25 |
| I have no direct knowledge or experience in this area, but...
Reading the fine print you'll find that DAK CD-ROM drive comes with
its own interface card. This would seem to indicate that this drive
doesn't attach onto standard floppy or hard drive controllers, and
it's probably not using a SCSI interface. So it may be a challenge
to get the drive connected to your Amiga. There have been recent
discussions about a new CD-ROM handler(?) which should allow you to
read most disks on the Amiga. Bear in mind that this gives you access
to the raw data, but the on-disk programs to display/lookup/etc. will
be usable only via the bridge board.
Possible solutions for the interface hardware problem - I don't know
whether the bridge board can 'serve' the IBM-style interface to the
Amiga side...
There are a couple of Zorro-to-IBM hard drive controller projects
around, e.g. "CheapHD". You might be able to adapt on of these to
work with the CD-ROM's interface.
DEC uses some kind of adapter (Adaptek?) board to turn a bare CD-ROM
drive into a SCSI CD-ROM. If you order the SCSI version of DEC's CD
drive, you mount the SCSI adapter card onto the outside of the drive
using stick-on plastic posts. Anybody have availability and price
info for these adapters?
|
| 4710.2 | is that a good price?? | SALEM::LEIMBERGER | | Mon Apr 29 1991 06:47 | 10 |
| If I remember correctly the xetec CD is not priced far above the price
you quoted from DAK. It may be up to $100.00 more but you wili be able
to plug,and run. Of course if you have the bridgboard you can plug in
the interface card for the pc side. I'd be more inclined to go the full
Amiga route though. I have seen PC scanners at the Amiga dealers that had
amiga software. You can use the Art Department Proffessional to go from
.pcx files to .iff files without any problems. I do it all the time for
my decstation 325. If you buy the lower end version "The Art
Department" you would have to buy addittional loaders. In the long run
the pro version works out to be the better deal.
|
| 4710.3 | DAKS price includes 5 cd roms. | ANGLIN::GAINES | | Mon Apr 29 1991 11:07 | 3 |
| The DAK price for their external CD ROM is $699 with 5 CD rom disks
loaded with books books books! Does the Amiga Drive come with any
CD software like DAK is offering?
|
| 4710.4 | CDROM | STAR::GUINEAU | but what was the question? | Mon Apr 29 1991 11:30 | 63 |
| > The DAK price for their external CD ROM is $699 with 5 CD rom disks
> loaded with books books books! Does the Amiga Drive come with any
> CD software like DAK is offering?
Probably just the Fred Fish CD.
There are tons of CDROM applications for PC and MAC - over 1000 titles. Some
very usefull ones (and some VERY expensive ones as well!)
For example, I bought "The Software Toolworks Reference Library" for $150.00.
It has (from memory):
Websters Dictionary - 3rd college edition
Websters Thesaurus
New York Desk Reference Library (*tons* of topice here!)
<something or other> list of famous quotes (a few thousand)
20th century US history events and places
Over 800 Business/Legal forms
Entire 5 digit US Zip code listing
US business names/addresses
Guide to Concise Writing
Spelling Checker
(and more I can't remember) all on 1 CDROM - and it's only about 80MB of
data - A CDROM can hold over 600MB! Amazing stuff!
So once I cracked the hidden file scheme they used in the ISO 9660 file system
on this CDROM, I was able to locate the data files and PC executables. I then
copied the PC executable application to a hard disk partition created under
the IBeM emulator, copied the Business forms data (about 1.5 MB) to the hard
disk, told the application that the CDROM was drive C: (the hard disk) and
it ran like a charm! I am thouroughly impressed with IBeM!
I also have a full 12 volume set of NASA Voyager 1&2 CDROM's. Over 30,000 images.
The moral is: buy a CDROM, get the ISO-9660 file system from Hyper Media
Concepts, get the IBeM emulator and and get the "Bureau of Electronic
Publishing's" catalog and have a blast - There are some nice titles on CDROM:
encyclopedias
history
graphics
entire works of Shakespeare
music
Dictionaries
language translators
referneces
medical info
scientific data (NASA)
Oxford English dictionary
the list goes on and on and on...
Some cost estimates:
CDROM drive $500-$1000
ISO 9660 file system $50.00
IBeM emulator $30.00
CDROM applications $30.00 - $30,000 (that's right! thousand!)
john
|
| 4710.5 | R/W laser vs CDROM | MQOFS::LECOMPTE | Acid Rain: It's raining death | Mon Apr 29 1991 13:59 | 10 |
|
Hi,
In the may issue of AmigaWorld there was a preview of read/write laser
disks available for the Amiga.
This technology being pretty new I was wondering if you can read
a CDROM on one of these read/write laser disks ?.
Hubert.
|
| 4710.6 | | ELWOOD::PETERS | | Mon Apr 29 1991 15:33 | 12 |
|
re .5
R/W Optical drives are big $$$ and I would not call them new.
These drives have been available for 3-4 years.
As for your question, nobody has R/W drive that can read or
write CD format. Best guess from the experts is 3-5 years before
a CD compatible R/W device is available.
Steve P.
|
| 4710.7 | Different technologies.... | ANGLIN::GAINES | | Mon Apr 29 1991 18:35 | 18 |
|
The tecnologies are different. The r/w lasers must heat a small
area of the disk to chage the permeable properties of the disk.
By permeable (not sure of spelling), I mean the resistance a
material has in regards to a magnetic flux change. Some materials
will allow a flux change easily others not so easy. I believe the
R/w opticals are coated with a thin material that has a high
permeable factor at normal temperatures. If however you heat the
material t has a low permeable factor and will readly allow a
magnectic flux change. The term for changing this is "coersitivity"
(not sure of spelling). The laser in a R/W optical must heat the
area to be wriiten to, then the R/W head can write to the disk.
Otherwise the disk can't be written to. I suppose they are using
thin film head tecnology for the R/W needs for this type of drive?
Not to sure here, anyone else want to enlighten us?
MAG
|
| 4710.8 | "Normally Free Software" | RGB::ROSE | | Mon Apr 29 1991 20:59 | 4 |
| The latest DAK catalog says you can get the external drive with the
"normally free software" for $699 or without the "normally free
software" for $399. Not a bad price. But, I wonder what Drew's
definition of "normally" is???
|
| 4710.9 | R/W laser disk. | MQOFS::LECOMPTE | Acid Rain: It's raining death | Mon Apr 29 1991 21:17 | 14 |
| Steve,
if you look in the may issue of AmigaWorld they are showing
3 drives. One of them from GVP is less than $1200.00 for a little
less than 600 Meg. It's a SCSI unit and the transfer rate they quote
are fair.
As far as the R/W laser disk, somebody told me that if the CDROM has
a standard he called "SIERRA" there should be no problem READING the
disk.
Anyone can give me more info.
Hubert
|
| 4710.10 | | STAR::GUINEAU | but what was the question? | Tue Apr 30 1991 00:34 | 13 |
| >
> As far as the R/W laser disk, somebody told me that if the CDROM has
> a standard he called "SIERRA" there should be no problem READING the
> disk.
CDROM is standardizing on the ISO 9660 file system format. High Sierra was the
predecessor to ISO 9660.
On the Amiga, you need the CDROM-FS from HyperMedia Concepts to use these
CDROM's
john
|