SCSI Express
Gerry,
To be explicit: SCSI Express will not work with ALL CD's. The CD's we will
have problems with are those which require more than the simple existence
of MSCDEX; or those which communicate directly with a driver. Most CD's
say they require MSCDEX; but in reality, all they need is some way to map
the CD to a drive letter. MSCDEX provides two basic areas of extensions:
1) it provides access to the CD-ROM through a drive letter; and 2) it
provides special extensions such as AUDIO, special information functions,
and a way to access the CD directly. Most CD-ROMs only require the CD to
be a drive letter; they don't need any of the other extensions. For SCSI
Express; the Network shell provides the drive letter; not MSCDEX.
How much of a problem will this be? That depends on the titles you have.
If ALL the titles you have only need a drive letter; then SCSI Express will
work for you. How can you tell in advance? Well, here is a test you can
perform (if you have the space) which will determine if the CD-ROM will
work with SCSI Express or not: Attach your CD-ROM drive to a workstation,
and copy the entire disk to a NetWork directory. Then map a drive to the
network directory (possibly using map root), and try the CD-ROM
application. If it works, it will work with SCSI Express. If it doesn't;
then it probably won't work with SCSI Express; it's that simple.
Regards,
Jim Duke