CompuServe Messages

Dear Britt, The problem you are stating is the most basic problem of Track-at-Once writing — you have to write a whole track in one smooth pass, any interruptions are fatal. One solution would be packet writing, where you write your data in much smaller chunks, smaller than the CD recorder's buffer even, so you _can't_ suffer a buffer underrun. The problem is that no existing CD-ROM drive can read a disc written in packets. The ECMA 168 standard has been proposed as a way to stretch the ISO standard to deal with this, but it would require CD-ROM manufacturers to support it by hardware changes, and no one is jumping up to volunteer (many of them are only just now waking up to the fact that their drives need to be able to read recordable discs!). ECMA also doesn't address the needs of the installed base of 50 million "dumb" CD-ROM drives. Incat has applied for a patent on a whole new approach which would support packet writing, while maintaining full backward compatibility with ISO and existing hardware. It's called FlexCD, and there's a press release about it in our library (GO INCATS). FlexCD was announced (and received enthusiastically) at the February meeting of the Optical Storage Technology Association. BTW, it will be licensed to whoever wants it, including our competitors. Best, Deirdre' Straughan Incat Systems