daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Dr. Walter C. Daugherity) (06/05/90)
Sun Microsystems is now pushing CD-ROM, and has announced in an official news release that "In 1991, Sun plans to convert exclusively to compact disc as the distribution medium for all its system and application software." Finally catching up to NeXT, eh? "Each CD stores up to 644 megabytes on a single-sided disc." Oops, Sun is ahead of NeXT (for now). "The SunCD uses a file system structure that conforms to established standards (ISO 9660 -- the "High Sierra Group" format). Is there any way NeXT (read Canon) can also read this standard? "And yes, you CAN play your CD audio discs in the SunCD! A headset or speakers can be plugged into the audio jack located on the front panel." Can a NeXT do that? Walter C. Daugherity Texas A&M University daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Internet) uunet!cs.tamu.edu!daugher (uucp) DAUGHER@TAMVENUS (BITNET)
pclark@SRC.Honeywell.COM (Peter Clark) (06/05/90)
Daughter@cs.tamu.edu writes: >Is there any way NeXT (read Canon) can also read this standard? > > "And yes, you CAN play your CD audio discs in the SunCD! A headset or > speakers can be plugged into the audio jack located on the front > panel." > >Can a NeXT do that? No, a NeXT can't do that, because NeXT doesn't have a CD-ROM disk drive. The NeXT disk drive is a magneto-optical read-write disk system. ---------- The Canon disk drive doesn't read CD-ROMs, and no-one's disk drive will write them (at least more than once). There are lots of third-party CD-ROM drives (including one by apple) which can be hooked to the SCSI port, given appropriate device drivers. Pete Clark Honeywell SRC pclark@src.honeywell.com
chari@math.utexas.edu (Christopher M. Whatley) (06/05/90)
daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Dr. Walter C. Daugherity) writes: >Sun Microsystems is now pushing CD-ROM, and has announced in an official news >release that > "In 1991, Sun plans to convert exclusively to compact disc as the > distribution medium for all its system and application software." >Finally catching up to NeXT, eh? Hardly. It is read only not read write. A totally different application. Actually it really, realy sucks. We do not have a CD ROM player here and we'd rather buy a workstation than spend money on this stupid thing. It is absurd to make us all toss our now useless tape drives in the trash can. We have two 150s, 60 and 20 MB QIC drives that work just fine thank you. And we can record on them too! > "Each CD stores up to 644 megabytes on a single-sided disc." >Oops, Sun is ahead of NeXT (for now). Nope. Sun is just adopting a standard that has been around for more than five years. The reason NeXT's optical disk holds so little (Ha) is because of the error correction space on the disk. You more of that for a write many optical disk than you do for a write once like a CD. > "The SunCD uses a file system structure that conforms to established > standards (ISO 9660 -- the "High Sierra Group" format). >Is there any way NeXT (read Canon) can also read this standard? The technology is very different. I think not. High sierra is not anything to write home about. CD filesystems are notoriously slow. On a Mac, the CD ROM takes forever when you load a new disk. Why would a NeXT need to use this format anyway? > "And yes, you CAN play your CD audio discs in the SunCD! A headset or > speakers can be plugged into the audio jack located on the front > panel." >Can a NeXT do that? No. But, a Sun cannot record music on its CDs. -- -- "I've got good news. The gum you like is going to come back in style." -- Chris Whatley - Research Systems Administrator UT-Austin Mathematics E-mail: chari@math.utexas.edu (NeXT) Ph: (O):512/471-7711 (H):512/499-0475
edwardj@microsoft.UUCP (Edward JUNG) (06/07/90)
In article <5596@helios.TAMU.EDU> daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Dr. Walter C. Daugherity) writes: >Sun Microsystems is now pushing CD-ROM, and has announced in an official news >release that > > "In 1991, Sun plans to convert exclusively to compact disc as the > distribution medium for all its system and application software." > >Finally catching up to NeXT, eh? The issue of CD-ROM vs. MOD (Magneto-Optical Drive) are orthogonal. CD-ROM is read-only, and a very cost-effective way of distributing information such as documentation. You can produce a CD-ROM for as little as $2.00 per CD (makes you wonder about how much the record companies are making on CDs), with a fixed cost that ranges from $2000 to $15000. This is *much* cheaper than distributing on paper. On the other hand, NeXT's MOD is read/write, and thus can be used for backup, secondary storage, and even (shudder) primary storage. MOD, however, is more expensive. NeXT's MOD is $50.00 per single- sided disk. NeXT's MOD is also NOT ISO standard (like the Sony, Ricoh and Maxtor systems, which usually work with double-sided media -- you must flip it to access the other side, and have a slightly higher storage density). In both cases you have the added benefit of on-line searching, browsing, and other tools unavailable when using paper documentation. As far as speed, there are two factors: access time and transfer rate. The access time AND transfer rate of CD-ROM are quite slow. The transfer rate is fixed by the audio standard (the rate used by the CD audio output governs the rate of the motor of the drive). The access time is slow because the standard CD mechanism doesn't have to be real fast. The ISO file system standard is just a way of indexing and retrieving files on the CD so different OS can access the same CD (they obviously cannot write their own file system structures on the CD-ROM). MOD today have relatively fast transfer rates. Their access times are usually 3-5 fold worse than hard disks. This is largely due to the high mass of the optical heads. Thin film heads are possible; this would reduce the access times to equivalent or better than hard disks. The gating factor is not technology, but mostly market demand to justify the cost of development and mass-production. Finally, bit densities of CDs are higher because they are stamped and do not allow change. With MOD, the density is lower due to the fact that both heat dissapation (with the laser) and magnetic field are involved; they both are local effects. Phase change optical disks (e.g. recently promoted by Panasonic) promise higher densities (as well as compatibility with WORM -- write-once read-many optical disks). Summary: CD-ROM: Very cheap, very high density, very slow access and transfer. NeXT MOD: Medium cost, high density, medium access time, high transfer rate. ISO MOD: High cost, high density, medium to fast access, high transfer rate. Removable HD: medium-high cost, low density, fast access, high transfer, medium reliability Fixed HD: no media, very high density (low per-platter), very fast access, medium to very high transfer rate, medium-high reliability. > > "And yes, you CAN play your CD audio discs in the SunCD! A headset or > speakers can be plugged into the audio jack located on the front > panel." > >Can a NeXT do that? No. The NeXT MOD is not a CD player; it can neither read the ISO format CDs, nor play audio CDs, not CD-I, nor read or write ISO format MOD media, nor read or write any WORM media. > >Walter C. Daugherity >Texas A&M University >daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Internet) >uunet!cs.tamu.edu!daugher (uucp) >DAUGHER@TAMVENUS (BITNET) Edward Jung Systems [Strategic Architect | Architectural Strategist] Microsoft Corp.