Re: SCSI-2 CD-ROM drivers

["Jason Whorton" <jason at microxl.com>]

Soooo, since I only have the Apple brand SCSI cards (one regular and one
high speed in seperate machines), then the only thing I am missing by not
using a CD-SC, CD-SC+ or CD-150 is software controllable music audio?  All
data functions would be OK with an Apple card and "pretty much" any modern,
standard CD-ROM drive?

Thank you,
Jason Whorton



"David Empson" <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote in message
1fkg5xd.bk5mlr1unridaN%dempson@actrix.gen.nz">news:1fkg5xd.bk5mlr1unridaN%dempson@actrix.gen.nz...
> "Joel" <joelbuckley54.nospam.@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I have Apple CD-150, CD-300 and CD-600 drives.
> > They all work for data reading, but only the CD-150 works for CD-Remote
> > audio play and the program controlled eject function.
> > I get the impression from reading the FAQs that I need a SCSI-2 driver
to
> > support these functions.
> > It refers to one by Sequential Systems.
> > Their web site www.sequential.com doesn't seem to be up.
> > Is it available anywhere?
>
> No.  As far as I recall, Sequential Systems announced that they would be
> releasing a driver for Apple SCSI cards to support the SCSI-2 audio CD
> command set, but it was never released.
>
> > What exactly does it do that the standard driver doesn't?
>
> It was supposed to be a driver for the Media Control toolset, which
> would have allowed the use of the Media Remote NDA to control playback
> of an audio CD in a CD-ROM drive on an Apple High-Speed or rev C SCSI
> card.
>
> In Apple's early CD-ROM drives (CD-SC, CD-SC+ and CD-150), they used a
> proprietary command set which was unique to Apple.  Support for this
> command set is built into the firmware of the Apple SCSI cards, the
> GS/OS SCSI CD-ROM driver and in the CD Remote NDA.  Apple used a
> proprietary command set because the SCSI-1 standard didn't include
> commands for controlling audio CDs.
>
> The SCSI-2 standard introduced a standard set of commands for
> controlling audio CD playback, which is incompatible with Apple's
> proprietary command set.  For the CD-300 and later models, Apple
> switched to the new standard command set, and no longer supported their
> earlier proprietary command set.  They updated the Mac drivers to
> support the new command set, but left the Apple II in limbo, only
> supporting the older command set (and hence the older drives, if you
> want software control of audio CD playback).
>
> There is no problem dealing with data CDs in newer CD-ROM drives, since
> that part of the SCSI command set is the same for older and newer
> models.
>
> --
> David Empson
> dempson@actrix.gen.nz