Sony Laser Library
3 messages in this thread
Ran, you mention possibly putting more smarts on the adapter card to help
reduce the CPU overhead… have you heard anything about a new type adapter
card being developed by Sony? I had heard rumors that a new card for the
Sony 8K CDROM drives will be released around June/July that will enable
them to maintain the MPC spec data transfer rate and keep CPU overhead down
below 40%.
I was just talking about general principles, Keith: how it could
theoretically be done. There've been rumors circulating around here about
possible upgrades, but no definite information about how they might do it.
It's not hard to do: even changing the existing driver software _might_ be
enough, since it appears that the card is capable of handling the transfer
rate in DMA mode. But that's all guesswork, based on experience with
other kinds of disk systems, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility that
they'll have to come up with a whole new interface card with its own buffer
and CPU.
Ran
Ok, Ran. Yes, I would hope it is possible to accomodate a fix in the
software driver and not in hardware. Still the cost of a new interface
board shouldn't be prohibitive, it's mostly a one chip VLSI board. I read
in another thread of some one's experience using a 6201 over a Novell
network and of reporting no observed degradation (pauses, gaps, flickering
read lights). They guessed it might have something to do with the network
buffering reads from the drive. I'm sort of hoping that disk cache writers
can figure out a way to enable caching of CDROM. I am not sure of why it
is not done now. I don't know the restrictions. My experience with Sony
Tech support last week does not lead me to believe that they would have an
asnwer to the upgrade question. Thanks, Keith.