Re: SCSI-2 CD-ROM drivers

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

"Jason Whorton" <jason at microxl.com> wrote:

> 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?

There might be other compatibility problems, but audio playback control
is the main one.

Old third party CD-ROM drives (1x drives of similar vintage to the Apple
CD-SC) tended to have completely proprietary command sets (requiring
special drivers on the Mac, for example).  These won't work at all on an
Apple II.

I don't think I've ever tried using a CD-ROM drive newer than an Apple
CD-SC with an Apple II SCSI card, so I can't say for certain that there
won't be any problems using a newer standard-compliant drive for
accessing data CDs.

At the very least, you won't get full performance out of a CD-ROM drive
faster than 1x, due to the limited throughput of the Apple II SCSI
cards.  The original SCSI card can't even sustain the throughput
required for 1x, but the high-speed SCSI card might be able to manage 2x
(under GS/OS).

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz