#SONY Data Diskman
8 messages in this thread
Hi,
does somebody can provide a list of CD-Rom titles for the Data Diskman (3')
available in the US?
Thanks in advance.
Regards, Wilfried
There are 2 Replies.
I was just at Computer City (Garden Grove, CA) and they had a few titles
available, but I didn't see any Sony Data Discman players. Among the titles
were Frommer's Guide to Major US Cities, the CIA World Fact Book, a
dictionary, a cookbook, and a guide to career planning.
I've asked around about the Data Discman and people seem to be saying
they'll be available in January '92. One interesting note – Sony is using
mini CD ROMs (the same size as audio CD singles) and I was told they
wouldn't mount on a regular CD-ROM drive.
Paul McGinnis / 76056,201
There is 1 Reply.
Paul,
thanks for your info. In Germay SONY just started to deliver the first
items of the player bundled with a dictionary and an encyclopedia and a
couple of additional disks are about to come soon. I talked to a CD-ROM
publisher yesterday and he already has contacts to SONY, Germany for
manufacturing additional titles. He told me that those small disks don't
support the High Sierra Standard. I guess that might be the reason why the
normal CD-ROM drives won't accept the new disks.
-Regards, Wilfried
There is 1 Reply.
Since the new Sony Data Discman doesn't support High Sierra/ISO type
CD-ROM's, I wonder if they will propose a new standard for their mini CD's
for international use. Actually, I also wonder if there is an international
standard for the new CD-I (interactive multimedia) drives for home use that
are now appearing.
There are 2 Replies.
1) The 18 minute discs used in the Data Discman can be loaded into a
standard CD-ROM drive, although you may need an adapter to hold the disc in
place. The same is true of 18 minute audio discs on some CD-Audio players.
2) Data Discman discs do use the same ISO-9660 volume format that most
standard CD-ROMs use. They don't use the High Sierra volume format.
3) Data Discman discs use the CD-ROM XA disc format. This means they may
not be fully readable on standard CD-ROM drives. Some CD-ROM drives will
not be able to read them at all. Most CD-ROM drives will be able to read
the data files (CD-ROM XA Form 1 sectors), but not the video or audio files
(CD-ROM XA Form 2 sectors). A CD-ROM XA drive should be able to read the
data, audio, and video files.
It might be possible for a computer with a standard CD-ROM drive to play
the video and audio files (Form 2), if you wrote an XA/Discman simulator
for your computer.
Sounds like the store clerk told me wrong about the Data Discman. Where do
I find the CD audio adapters (at the prices I saw for Data Discman software
– like $30 for the CIA World Factbook while the Wayzata version lists for
$129 trying the conversion makes sense) ??
As others in this thread noted, the small disks are ISO standard.
However, the reason they wont work in a regular CDROM system, even with the
special carrier, is that the interface and retrieval engine for the Data
Discman is in ROM in the player. The disks contain only data, no program.
And that data is not in an especially readable form. Each application
consists of a single file with the indexes, text, menus, etc. You might be
able to extract information from it but with difficulty.
– J Isdale