DAK CD ROM reader
40 messages in this thread
I saw in the currnent DAK catalog an advertisement for a CD ROM player with
several disks of information and search/retrieval information. This is the
first time I have honestly regretted I did not have an IBM compatible.
(hanging head with shame) I assume that the device does, or can be made
to, look like an external floppy or hard disk to the computer, but does
anyone know how this would be done on an Amiga? I have an Amiga 500 with
2.5 Meg memory and three floppy drives.
Also, is there anything that is available for the search/retrieval software
on the Amiga, and something that will convert IBM VGA graphics to Amiga IFF
files, preferably "on the fly" while accessing the database?
Perhaps, (I hope) this sort of thing is available already. If not, perhaps
some vendor out there somewhere will take interest.
Thanks Steve.
I have no idea why that would make you wish you had an IBM! Xetec is
currently marketing a CD-ROM drive for the Amiga with a disk with the
entire fish collection on it.
— Ethan
Ethan – I think the DAK deal has an atlas, encyclopedia, and a whole bunch
of other stuff… this is quite different than the Fish collection on
cdrom.
The DAK layout was quite a bit more impressive than the Fish Disks.
…Dave
OK. I thought the implication was that you couldn't get a CD-ROM player
for the Amiga, not that there was no software for one once you bought it.
Have no fear though. With CDTV, and the ensuing Commodore line of CD
players for the current Amiga models, there will be support. Of course, it
is all hinging on CDTV.
— Ethan
This is what I had hoped. (wiping brow with relief) However, what had
caught m eye was not so much the reader, as the data disks available for
it. e.g., encyclopedias, classical and modern works of fiction, fact, and
philosophy and so forth.
I just yesterday read an article in Amiga+ about Commodore's CDTV which
sounds like everything I was wanting and more. It looks very encouraging.
I haven't seen that article… as I shared your interest in the data-disk
package that came with the DAK system I am mostly wondering what Commodore
plans to BUNDLE in with CDTV, if anything… paying $395 for the Groliers
plus $295 for the Atlas, plus, plus, will not stack CDTV up to the PC deals
around (I even saw the SMothers Brothers ad on TV last night touting the
Magnavox/HeadStart CDROM-PCs, which, around here run $998 for the 40MB
XT-clone with CDROM player and 5 or 6 CD's of reference stuff)…
DO you have any idea what bundling CBM is planning ? – da – via Whap!
According to the British magazine Amiga Format, at least one disk will come
with CDTV. It'll contain a tour of the CDTV system and how it works. It
will also have six sub-sections: A visit to the Amazonian basin and trip
around a rain forest; A short tour of the Victoria and Albert museum; the
life and times of Bach; A history of space exploration and the shuttle; The
components of the decathalon; A walk around the pyramids.
At least, that's what they're planning for the release in Britian. They say
release will take place in February.
I was told last night that the Canadians just might have some CDTV's for
SALE at the WOC show there the first week of Dec. I know it is to be shown
– but I was amazed that they may actually be offered for sale at the show.
Betty
Howcum the US is always last to get new things? <sigh>
And a friend who went to COMDEX talked to the Yamaha people, who told him
that the CD-I player they were showing was already available in Japan… so
they said.
Believe me, Kevin – you would not want me to give my opinions on that! So
I won't.
🙂
Betty
How can Yamaha be shipping a CD-I player? I thought CD-I wasn't finished
and that no software is shipping. Perhaps they were referring to a
developers model.
— Ethan
No, the CD-I developers' models have been around for a couple of years.
It's the "consumer" models (the ones with full-motion video) that aren't
for sale yet in the US (tho we already knew that the Japanese were slated
to sell those several months before they hit our shores).
But the "industrial" production versions have been around since early this
year or late last year:
Renault uses them for dealer training on marketing… with many languages
on the same disc so that it can be used around the world. Principal Mutual
of Des Moines unveiled a CD-I kiosk last May for training its employees.
Very likely, the Army "MASH" units in Saudi Arabia are equipped with
players for war-injury training and surgery help. A friend at SUN in
California told me he has a few dozen players in his office. I've heard of
other companies with hundreds. Etc.
So they've been out there in industrial use for a while now. But this was
the first I'd heard claims of the consumer model being available… which
is why I noted "so they said" in my message. I'll try to track down more
definitive info on the Yamaha model. best – kev
Sheesh – The DAK CD-ROM package is a SONY CD-ROM plus :
21 volume Groliers Encyclopedia CDROM
450 books "classic library" CDROM (complete Shakespeare, Bible,
Koran, Poe, Conan Doyle, etc, etc – count em 450 books)
12 different language dictionaries CDROM
World & US Atlas CDROM
Referenyce Library CDROM (dictionary, hesaurus, 8 more)
– for $699 WITH the drive, you supply a cheap PC …sigh
It is going to be very hard not to end up with a PC and this package before
1991… C= NEEDS to bundle CDTV with a package COMPETITIVE with this
year's CD-PC marketplace – even if it is all boring, static, un-animated
data. IMHO.
– da – via Whap!
Daryl,
DAK also sells that package bundled with their BSR 386sx machine.
A friend of mine is thinking of getting one, and even adding some
options it only comes out to $2400 for:
a 4 Meg 386sx based machine (runs at 20 Mhz if memory is right)
with 80 Meg HD
CD ROM (built in) including the software you mentioned.
VGA monitor
plus quite a bit of MS-DOS software, including Windows 3.0 and
Word Star (along with quite a bit more).
It is tough to compete with that.
Don
At the local CompuAdd, they're selling a CD ROM drive, external, with SCSI
adapter, for $495, and they have a comparable pack of six CD ROMs for only
$200. Tempting, but all my PC's slots are filled… 🙂
Don, YUP – that DAK catalog is well thumbed by now (although I hear they
are "out of stock" from someone who ordered it (active thread(s) in the
CDROM forum !)) I always hoped my '386 machine would be the 386-BB and my
CDROM would be CDTV but its getting tough to figure how that'll ever
happen… – da – via Whap!
Sorry, no I don't. The article was not very helpful on that matter, and I
gathered that that isn't known at present. I hope the CDTV stuff ends up
being competative, or the Magnavox/HeadStart package will be hard to
resist.
Steve.
There was a recent post on Usenet about new titles coming out.
Apparently there is a solid list of 35 products which will be released come
early next year when the thing is released. Apparently there is an
encyclopedia (with pics), a bible, all those things you saw in Amiga
World/Amazing Computing are being repeated including the murder mystery.
As to games, they claim that SimCity is being put on CD, perhaps a
SimCity/SimWorld combo cd. Also MicroProse, Spectrum Holobyte, Sierra
On-Line and Cinemaware are all developing for CDTV. There will be support
for this thing. It will almost certainly sell big-time in Europe, where
Commodore has a big base of support. There it will probably destroy CD-I,
IMHO. Here however Commodore may not be able to pull it off, simply because
of their name.
— Ethan
Supposedly, Antic Publishing is working on a CDTV multimedia magazine,
too…
John:
Do you happen to know if the CD-ROM drive you saw, or any SCSI CD-ROM drive
for that matter, can be used with the Amiga to run CDTV applications? I saw
a NEC CD-ROM drive at the local Byte Shop that they only wanted $300.00 or
there abouts for. It is a funny looking unit, as it's sort of like a
portable music CD player with a plugin adapter to make it into a CD-ROM
drive. I was wondering if it would pay to pick it up, and use it with the
Amiga to run CDTV stuff.
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
If it's SCSI interfaced, there's an outside chance. All you'd need is the
SCSI CD ROM driving software from an Amiga company that could drive it.
However, as we've seen with SCSI hard drives on the Amiga, they aren't
exactly plug-and-play, although you think they would be. I hope I'm wrong
– maybe all SCSI CD ROM players are the same software interface. Also, I
don't know if any companies are selling their CD ROM software separately,
apart from their own drives.
I believe most of the CD-ROM disk manufacturers have "personalized" their
internal data formats such that you need to use their "reader" program to
access them – since the reader program runs, e.g., on a PC or Mac you've
got to wait for the Amiga version… also, since the CDROMS are typically
10-20 times SLOWER access times than Hard-disks (350-750ms avg) many of the
apps actually download their indexes to the HardDisk – requiring filesystem
(e.g. MSDOS) level access to that component… Hopefully C= will wuickly
establish a major enuff presence with CDTV to get all of most of the
current FLOOD of PC-version CDROM stuff "ported".
– da – via Whap!
You're talking about a level higher than the level I'm worried about…
I'm not familiar with how the existing Amiga drivers work for CD-ROMs.
Yes, of course, PC and Mac disks tend to use their own data formats, stored
in a PC or Mac file system format on the disk.
I can kinda understand the use for an encyclopedia, but I don't know
what the uses, for most people, would be for having books on CD. I
certainly don't like reading for hours off of a monitor. The only really
significant use would be for finding quotes, but then how often do you do
that?
— Ethan
Ethan:
I think I have a use that's nearly ideal for CD-ROM. Got the idea from the
offering of the Superman comics on microfiche. Why not on CD ROM? With that
much storage you could get whole Marvel set (or what have you) on a couple
of CD's. Probably won't be cheap though.
Just another thought from the lunatic fringe <grin> regards,
greg
It'd be very useful for students doing research on these works. I probably
wouldn't consider buying the package strictly for the "Classics" disks, I
already have a good 60 to 70% of that stuff on paper. But hey, I'll take
it if they're giving it out. Who knows, it might come in handy when I
decide to dump engineering and get my doctorate on classical literature.
🙂 Steve
> I don't know what the uses, for most people, would be for having books >
on CD.
I am a physician, and for the most part, my medical library is reference
material, not books that I sit down with and relaxedly peruse in the
evenings. On CD-ROM, with good indexing, scanning, and viewing software, I
would be willing to pay as much as text. (My 3-volume Anesthesiology
reference text costs about $150!).
At any rate, there are CERTAINLY good uses for text on CD-ROM.
. . . . . . JimDoc
I think you pointed out the proper use of text on CD-ROM. Too many people
are thinking of it as something to just read through. Most of the CD-ROM
disks will be materials that are often used in research of one kind or
another, and I expect an ever-increasing amount of it. Two examples: There
is a 3-volume TEXAS HANDBOOK that no Texas library would be without, and
which is used by Texans in all kinds of situations – from genealogy to the
investment business. This set is getting rather old, and is undergoing
revision now, to be released in about two years – on CD-ROM, as well as on
paper. The new version will be maintained on a computer, with each section
having someone responsible for keeping that part updated. We hope it will
never again be so obsolete as it now is, and expect the CD-ROM version to
be quite popular. I have no connection whatever with this project, but
have recently discussed it with a man who is in charge of one of the
sections.
Another use: The LDS church has recently put its International
Genealogical Index (an index to most of their holdings) on microfiche, but
has now transferred it to CD-ROM as well. Researchers can go to one of
their libraries that is equipped with a computer and the CD-ROM, and can
download to his formatted disk a list of everything they know about the
surnames in which he is interested. They also have CD-ROMs of a second
division of their information, which is more detailed, but covers fewer
parts of the world, and this is available in the same manner. I believe
there are about twenty CD-ROM disks full of this material- and they are
busily indexing and creating more all the time.
I would pay for a CD-ROM that had all of the US Censuses on it; all of the
shipping records of immigrants to the US, especially in the earliest times;
Civil War and Revolutionary War service records – the list goes on and on.
Everything that requires research into standard documents and records will
profit from being placed on a CD-ROM with proper search facilities.
[ MORE ]
JIM,
Are you familiar with CMC research out in Portland Oregon (503-639-1796) ?
They have a lot of Medical CDROMs, especially Journals, although I don't
see Anaesth. on their list. They were giving away a CDROM player if you
bought a special 5 disk package (FP oriented) for $1295.
An interesting aside – they have PC version and are just shipping MAC
version – but report to me that the programmer who did the MAC port did it
on an AMIGA running AMAX !?. C= has apparently loaded them a 2500HD, so
you can expect to see AMIGA versions soon.
– da – via Whap!
Steve,
I just saw it and share your feelings viz regrets… That is a TREMENDOUS
package of stuff, certainly for almost anyone but definitely for someone
like myself with kids in and going in to school. The Encyclopedia,
Dictionaries, Atlasses, PLUS that 450 book library (mostly stuff I'd like
to have around but not pay for (Aeschulus, Chaucer, etc), plus, plus, just
blows me away – for $699 WITH the SONY CD-ROM its brutal… I have been
staring at these issues for a few months now. With the CDTV
pre-announcement and now Xetec's offering their CD-ROM (but no
encyclopedia) and I would recommend visiting or joining CIS's CDROM sig – I
just did…
Not only is the DAK drive and bundle a great deaql but the
CD-ROM-equipped PCs are just hitting the discount/audio/appliance stores
around here, specifically the HeadStart/Magnavox systems which offer either
AT or XT systems, WITH 40MB HD, PLUS CD-ROM, plus VGA, PLUS the Groliers
Encyclopedia and 4 other CDs, plus audio-CD capability, for $2400 and $1400
respectively. I never thought I'd consider an 8088 machine again but that
base machine (40MB drive and CD-ROM drive, plus the CDROMS wuz $998,
jeez… I mean here I am considering a $600 encyclopedia (hardcopy)… and
Britannica is $1400, right…
I expect we will see more…
<<more>>
– da
The access times on these devices are 80 ms at best. In practical terms you
get real tired of waiting for the software to find what you are looking up,
especially on a slow cpu. I had this CD Rom revolution in mind when I put a
bridge board in my 2000 I am planning to upgrade it with a Sota 386 Board
and VGA one of these days when I have some money. In the meantime the
drives will get cheaper and faster and the software bundles bigger.
To get to the specific questions that you have…
I think the DAK drive is almost certainly a SCSI device (all or almost all
CDROMs are) and the 'connector card' that DAK includes is a PC SCSI card –
thats good news cuz all sorts of AMI options for SCSI exist and that is the
standard way of connecting most harddisks to AMI… I would expect that I
could plug the DAK unit on to my SCSI controller and read the RAW data
stored on it.
The problem, as you seem to notice, is that the RAW access doesn't mean
anything about meaningful data access, e.g. access to the structures on
disk (CDROM) that tell how the information is laid out (just as AmigaDos
has a way of organizing data on AMi disks, MSDOS on PC's etc), OR how the
specific CDROM manufacturer has stored their data (e.g. DBase Iv stores its
files as PC/MS-DOS format, but additionally stores data, indices, etc in
its own internal formats) The Groliers Encyclopedia folks have some way of
internally storing all the keys that allow fast word and article access and
mebbe even the articles which are not (as far as I know) documented, and
the Atlas program and 450-book library CDROMs may actually store their
stuff differently. For the PC machines the "reader" software that DAK
supplies will know how to get the information off the CDROMs but those
CANNOT be run on AMIGA, natch.
I'm told that most PC-market CDROMs store the data as just huge MS-DOS
filesystems, so we might be able to use a filesystem "converter" program
like DOS-2-DOS (there is also a PD program to do this) to allow us some
sort of access to, e.g., a DAK drive connected up to an AMIGA SCSI
controller…
BUT, we'd still be left with a bunch or inaccessible internal formats in
the data that describes what is where, and no way to run the reader
software.
<<more>>
– da
..A few thoughts more…
In principle a PC-Emulator that runs on AMI that can talk to AMI harddisks
could run the Groliers or other PC-specific "reader" software and talk to
the PC-CDROM. Neat – plus it would still be available as an AMI CDROM if
anything other than FISHDISK-on-ROM becomes available… You can save money
this way, MAYBE, by doubling up equipment – you don't have two monitors,
two harddisks, two keyboards, etc, just two CPUs sharing all the
peripherals. BUT the Amiga-PC clone(s) are none of them perfect
(BridgeBoard-8088 slow, BB-80286 too expensive, Pulsar board persnickety
and doesn't run as AMI task and ATonce too new (although otherwise very
attractive possibility). And such a "hybrid" configuration might not work.
PLUS some of these cheap CDROM-PCs are just so DARN CHEAP as is its cheaper
to have two computers, sigh…
As you also noticed, from your trailing question, much of the PC-CDROM
stuff is now talking 256-color VGA for some NICE displays and our 1985
graphic/video technology on AMI is not up to that, IMHO. Plus the
PC-Emulator options for AMI either do not allow or require extra $$$ to
achieve VGA.
Another option is Mac emulation via AMAX and with a nice interlaced display
(either eye-strain or $$$ on your part) you avoid the VGA issue since Mac
stuff still assumes non-color.
Xetec MUST be doing more than just the FISHDISK-CDROM, and their price is
decent, but I haven't heard. And I doubt if they have the clout to pick up
CDROM bundles like Groliers and the other stuff.
COMMODORE MUST (!please?) be trying to get all or most of this technology
into CDTV but I have heard conflicting reports and I worry that they will
NOT make the deals to bundle in the Encyclopaedic Stuff as they seek to
define NEW video/interactive TV technologies… I won't buy CDTV for $899
then spend $595 for the Groliers Encyclopedia disk when that $998 CDROM-PC
is staring me in the face – no matter HOW NEAT the games on CDTV are…
and, of course, it will be hard to wait another 6 months for CDTV.
[ MORE ]
Daryl,
May I make a suggestion? Would you post this message (re CD-ROM) over on
CBMSER FORUM? The sysop over there is a Commodore employee, and is their
representative here. He needs to be taking your message back to Commodore
and putting it on the right desks. If you put it on his forum, he will be
sure to see it, and will do exactly that.
Betty
[ continuation ]
This stuff seems to be REALLY taking off in the PC world and I hope AMI is
right on top of it. Since IT is NOW, CBM best get hopping.
-nuff said for now
– da
Hi Steven, A CD-ROM reader will be available by GVP the next weeks. They
announced this t the Amiga-Show in Cologne at the DTM-booth.
Be prepared for exciting software like Font-Disks for DTP, Distant-Sun with
250.000 stars and more… We are getting excited!
Rgds. Andreas
Andreas:
I get the message! We'd better get busy and get Distant Suns
ported to the CD's. <grin> Seriously though, I wouldn't expect it before
the end of 1991 at the earliest. We just don't have the manpower to get it
out before then.
Clint <VRLI>
I thought you are still working on this stuff? Have I got wrong information
from Werner ?
Hurry up, the CD will be the greatest media for the next years, moreover
we'll happy that we stop piracy copying by this.
We are as fast as we can. Other than Mike Smithwick, the author, I
am the only technical person available to work on it, and I also work on
the acquisition of landscape data, the actual building of the Vista DEM
landscapes, all VRLI tech support and user group demos, plus a significant
portion of our marketing effort. Obtaining imagery and the rights to it is
quite time consuming, let alone the 'simple' task of scanning it in. If we
make it by the end of '91, I will be quite happy.