paul@aucs.uucp (Paul Steele) (01/11/90)
We will probably be getting a CD-ROM player for our network server
soon and want to know what players others have been using. I've
been told that the Apple CD-ROM player is slow and overpriced (as usual).
What we would like actually is a CD-ROM played that can take 2 or more
CDs at the same time. We have one on a PC that can take up to 4 disks.
Any info would be appreciated.
--
Paul H. Steele UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai}!cs.dal.ca!aucs!Paul
Acadia University BITNET: Paul@Acadia or PHS@Acadia (preferred)
Wolfville, NS Internet: Paul@AcadiaU.CA
CANADA B0P 1X0 (902) 542-2201x5876600bike@hub.UUCP (Puneet Pasrich) (01/18/90)
From article <1990Jan10.181218.17218@aucs.uucp>, by paul@aucs.uucp (Paul Steele): > We will probably be getting a CD-ROM player for our network server > soon and want to know what players others have been using. I've > been told that the Apple CD-ROM player is slow and overpriced (as usual). I'm using the Apple CD on a AppleShare server and have had a couple probelms with it. 1) It's a major pain to "publish" a CD w/ AppleShare. Without going into the details, you have to shutdown the server and run the Admin application from a different disk. Also, it took me a record _2_ hours (that's right, two hours) to publish Educorp 3.0, a PD CD with lots of small files. 2) It takes a bunch of time to actually get the server up-and-running with CDs online. For some lame reason (it's lame because I don't understand this phenomen (sp?) yet) AppleShare has to check all of the files on the CD to "make sure it's readable". Now, why on a write-protected media does it have to check, I don't know. I bought another CD for the network to try to see if Appl s CD was lame. I bought a Denon, after checking out prices for a while. Anyway, this was _much_ slower than Apple's. I'd say go with the Apple's...if you have the money! ___________________________________________________________ |Puneet Pasrich | Internet: 6600bike@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu | |Karate Kid | Bitnet: 6600bike@ucsbuxa.bitnet | |'Just do it!' | |
korn@eris.berkeley.edu (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) (01/18/90)
In <3632@hub.UUCP>, you said: > >I'm using the Apple CD on a AppleShare server and have had a couple >probelms with it. 1) It's a major pain to "publish" a CD w/ AppleShare. >Without going into the details, you have to shutdown the server and run >the Admin application from a different disk. Also, it took me a record >_2_ hours (that's right, two hours) to publish Educorp 3.0, a PD CD with >lots of small files. 2) It takes a bunch of time to actually get the >server up-and-running with CDs online. For some lame reason (it's lame >because I don't understand this phenomen (sp?) yet) AppleShare has to >check all of the files on the CD to "make sure it's readable". Now, why >on a write-protected media does it have to check, I don't know. >... There are a couple of ways to make things faster. AppleShare wants to keep user/group/world permissions information for every disk it serves. It cannot write this stuff to a CD, so it writes it to a special file (called the Parallel Directory Structure or PDS) which it keeps in the Server Folder of the main server volume (boot volume). The first time you insert a foreign CD & try to serve it, AShare needs to walk the disk and create this structure. Once created, it can (optionally) be kept on the server, even when that disk is not being served. By keeping this structure around, the next time you want to serve that disk it won't take forever for AShare to come up -- it'll already have that PDS waiting there for use. Now, the second issue with coming up slowly is: if the server was down & not serving, but running as a mac (boot from floppy & diddle at all with any of the writable drives it's serving) then the Server must rebuild (or at least validate) the PDS; because if the PDS is out of synch with what's actually on the disk, bad things can happen. In fact, most of the time that the server spends checking things is to ensure that the PDS is in synch with the file system. When you boot up the server, it does a quick check of all the disks being served to make sure that the last modified dates match (and assumes that if this is so, then the PDS is in synch). One of the fastest ways to make your server faster is to make it a faster machine; and to add memory to it. AShare wants to cache the disk, and if it can, will go a lot faster (20-50% depending upon how heavily loaded). Additional RAM will also help the initial PDS checking, and the initial creation of a PDS for a CD. Hope this helps. Peter -- Peter "Arrgh" Korn korn@mica.Berkeley.EDU {decvax,hplabs,sdcsvax,ulysses,usenix}!ucbvax!mica!korn