Re: What do you do with an Apple //?

[shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <199708041714.TAA20594@basement.replay.com>,
Anonymous <nobody@REPLAY.COM> wrote:

>>I have a CD150 on my IIgs. Did you think I just pulled my advice out of my 
>>ass?
>
>That's colorful.  :)

Just pointing out that I've tried out what I'm recommending.

>>The speed is adequate. The advantage of the single speed (CD SC, CD SC
>>plus, and CD150) is their using Apple proprietary SCSI commands. These are
>>what the supplied drivers in system 6 use. If you like the plug 'n play, no
>>muss no fuss setup characteristic of Apple systems, this is the thing for you.
>
>True.  But you do know that the same drivers will work on SCSI II standard
>CD-ROM drives when reading _data_ discs?  _Only_ the audio commands won't
>work with Apple's Media Control CD-ROM driver and the CD Remote DA, and
>that's easily remedied by third party drives (see http://www.allelec.com/).
>If you don't play audio discs, then the system 6 drivers work fine!

Yep I know that only the audio commands are proprietary, and the normal drivers
will do data. New drivers which use SCSI II audio commands cost $ right? 
Apple's single speeds don't cost any extra.

>>BTW I don't play audio discs on my IIgs since you can't get audio to come
>>out the internal speaker
>
>Why would you want to use the internal speaker?  It sucks.  The IIgs has
>such a powerful synthesizer chip, but it has a tiny internal speaker.
>Hook up a pair of AppleDesign Powered Speakers to the GS and then hook
>up your CD-ROM drive to the second set of inputs.  Or do what I did: dig
>up an external 2-channel stereo mixer box, connect both the GS and the
>CD-ROM drive to it, and route the output to powered speakers (this is the
>way to go for most speakers, but the AppleDesign has dual inputs built in).

I listen to CDs through my Quadra's internal speaker since it's handy to do so.
Since audio goes from the CD to the logic board, it's easy to have CD audio and
normal audio go to the same speaker. Plus digitizing off CDs is easy. It is
said that you can do this stuff with an external CD, but I don't know how. 
SOS-APPL said it couldn't be done. Hence I listen to CDs on an internal CD.
The Win95 box I have to use at work is as bad, there's no cable to run CD
audio to the sound card so gotta plug speakers to the CD drive to hear music
and switch 'em to the sound card to hear anything other than beeps. Yecch.

>>plus it won't work in 8 bit apps. I use the ol' 840 to play audio discs.
>
>I read something about a CDA for playing audio discs in P8.  Look around
>for it.  Who wants to use 8-bit apps anyway?

Because there isn't very much good native software in my opinion.

>>
>>>12X, maybe even 6X drives would be an overkill for the GS (no one
>>>writing CD games), but 2X makes things bearable.
>>
>>I used to use my CD150 on my Quadra 700 and the speed was good enough to
>>play quicktimes off CDs. That's pretty respectable, and considering what
>>single speed CDs go for now, I think it's a good setup.
>
>The CD150 has terrible seek times.  If you are going to search through
>an archive CD, be prepared to wait.

Here's the deal: I advise one thing, and you advise another. Why not let the
reader decide and leave it at that?

FWIW, I have the CD150 on the IIgs mainly since there's not much else to do
with it after I replaced my Q700 with the 840av. I put an internal CD600
in it. The only IIgs CD I have on hand is the 6.0 golden master. So as you
may guess, I wasn't gonna spend any extra $ on it. So plug 'n play was handy.
You're giving people who, like me, might have an Apple single speeder on hand
the idea that it won't work when it will, quite nicely.
-- 
Randy Shackelford                                 
shack@frii.com