Re: Apple CD150 and the GS...

[ntt@cleese.apana.org.au (Jonathan Pratt)]

volk@seas.smu.edu (Andrew R. Volk) writes:
> I recently purchased an Apple CD150 for my GS, but I won't be able to hook it
> up until summer, and I was wondering how compatible it is with a RAMfast card.
> I keep reading little notes (such as in the current Scarlett article on
> discQuest "You won't be able to heard CD quality sound through your GS speakers
> though. [with the Apple CD 150]) which makes me worry about my choice. 
> Have I chosen the wrong drive?

Only if what you wanted to do was hear the audio tracks on CDs (ROMs or
otherwise).  Because of the way the RamFAST works it is difficult to send
the SCSI commands necessary for the CDSC 150 to play audio.  Jawaid
showed, however, that it could be done with his media controller drivers
for playing the audio tracks.  (Very buggy, but worked with the RamFAST
and CDSC 150)  Perhaps these will be incorporated into a future version of
DiskQuest.

The CDSC works fine with the RamFAST but I have noted the following
problems. (I have ROM 3.01e = latest)

1) if you do not have a CD in the drive when you turn on the computer (ie
RamFAST) you will not be able to access more than the first two partitions
of the CD when you install it.  This is only a problem for the GEM and
System 6.0 Golden Master CD's which each have 6 partitions.  (you get
around this by reseting the computer, and everything appears on the desktop)

2) When you trash a single partition from the desktop, the entire disk is
ejected.  This is only a problem for multipartition CD's (as above).  It
did cause a few headaches, however for a certain mac CD ROM I had which
had this small {40k} partition that GS/OS didn't want to know about. 
Naturally I couldn't initialize it so GS/OS ejected it as well as the
entire disk, making the 600MB of data difficult to reach.  I got around
this one too, but its a long story.

3) If jawaid's media controller drivers are installed (I think they're the
problem) mounting a CD ROM might cause the system to emit strange sounds
and continually access the CD ROM drive (like having it continually access
a 3.5 by spinning it) until you reset, which allows proper mounting.  This
seems to be an intermittant problem, however.

4) If you have less than this ROM ug in your RamFAST you will be unable to
mount High Sierra (ISO 9660) CD's.  They will not appear on the desktop,
and since that is the nature of the DiskPassage CD's (the type used by
DiskQuest) multimedia in that form is still beyond you.

DiskQuest works fine, (my version = 1.2), allowing you to scan through the
text and picture files on the CD.  The audio files are not accessible (note
that they are actually CD audio on an audio track on the CD and are
'played' while you read other things.  The sounds never come through the
GS' speaker, but through whatever stereo you have attached to the audio
out of your CD ROM drive. - if you have a CD player {not ROM} you can
listen to them there) with my CDSC 150.

The World Fact Book actually has 5 second excerpts of the national anthem
of each country and these can be heard by pplaying track 2 from an
ordinary CD player  (or you can use Jawaid's media controller drivers, but
usage of them is rather cryptic and buggy)

Oh well.   Just enjoy the world of CD ROM.

cheers
ntt@cleese