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

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford) wrote:
in response to my reply:
>>Single speed?  Bad advice, Randy.  Have you ever tried to use a GS
>>archive CD in a single speed drive?  It crawls.  This is not an insult,
>>but if you are actually planning to _use_ the drive for anything other
>>than playing music CDs, then a double speed is a must.  Double speeds
>>are going as cheap as singles these days and with the right drivers,
>>they play music discs just fine.
>>
>>I tried a single speed before and it sucked.  Trying to load an archive
>>or a program using such a drive, well you might as well be using a
>>floppy.
>
>I have a CD150 on my IIgs. Did you think I just pulled my advice out of my 
>ass?

That's colorful.  :)

>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!

>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).

>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?

>
>>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.

-Scott G.