Re: Which CD-ROM?

[gtolar@blkbox.com (Glynne Tolar)]

Michael Quattrocchi (mquattro@chat.carleton.ca) wrote:
: Glynne Tolar (gtolar@blkbox.com) wrote:

: > is fast.  It will read all formats.  It even supports reading of audio CD 
: > data.  Though currently no software for the II uses this feature.  I've 

:     [...]

: > don't think it supports photo CD though.  <sigh>  Nor audio CD data 
: > reading.  It will play CDs fine.

: what exactly do you mean by audio CD's? Most of the SCSI CDROM drives
: can be used to read audio cd's; either through the RFMedia drivers, or
: via the external controls on their front panel...
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Few drives have that feature.

: now, if you mean the transmission of the audio data across the scsi
: bus, then that's a different story.... reportedly, the NEC drives are
: incapable of doing this, but i'm yet to see any hard evidence through
: testing by my own means... besides, I know of no II software that
: accesses these features currently, and i'm unaware as to whether the
: RAMFast card has had provisions made for this...

I said there was no software that supported reading of audio CD data over 
SCSI.  But you cut that out of my message (maybe did not read it too?).
I also said in same said message I did write some software to do it.
So it can be done!!!  Only the newer NEC drives can read audio CD data.
(not to be confused with playing audio CDs)

As an example of NEC being able to do this here is what NEC docs I have say:

NEC Read CD-DA MSF Command

	$D5	SCSI Command
	$00
	$00
	$XX	Starting Min.
	$XX	Starting Sec.
	$XX	Starting Frame
	$XX	Ending Min.
	$XX	Ending Sec.
	$XX	Ending Frame
	$XX	Control byte (usually $00)


: I had a NEC-CDR38 for a day; took it back because it wouldn't play
: audio cd's without crashing or freezing up... it did data cd's
: beautifully, and as it turns out, it was crashing because my RAMFast
: roms were not a high enough revision... sigh.

Now if you tried reading audio CDs with the CDR-38 it will not work.  It 
is an old drive and does not support this command.  Now if all you tried 
to do to read audio CDs was with something like block warden.  That will 
not work either.  You have to do some programming!