Re: PCT and CD-ROM Drives

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <edwojcie-0407962034410001@plks-s7.intac.com>,
Ed Wojciechowski <edwojcie@intac.com> wrote:
> Help,
>   Does anyone know, or had any sucess, connecting a PC Transporter to the
> Apple CD-150 CD ROM drive? I need to read a DOS CD-ROM disk and would like
> to be able to do it this way.

I've never tried, but I doubt you would have any luck at all.

The PC Transporter can only access drives on the "Apple II side" in
two ways:

1. As a floppy disk (emulated if necessary).
2. As a hard drive image file on a ProDOS volume.

(Other methods might be possible if someone wrote a "portware" driver
for the PCT to do the necessary hardware emulation.)

The PC expects an MS-DOS device driver to provide access to a CD-ROM
drive.  The driver expects the appropriate direct hardware interface
to the CD-ROM (e.g. an IDE or SCSI interface) or an appropriate
low-level driver (e.g. some SCSI cards).  None of these are available
on the PC Transporter.

In addition, if a non-ProDOS disk is inserted into a CD-ROM drive, you
might not be able to access it all under ProDOS-8 (in theory, an Apple
High-Speed SCSI card will allow block-level access to a single
partition of such a volume, but I've never tried this.)
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand