CompuServe Thread

Larry, how much differance is there between a CD-ROM player and a CD music disk player? I talking about the player itself not the controller…Dave

Larry: Information is generally put on a CD-ROM in a mastering process by a commercial facility from 9-track tape. Several of these facilities exist including LaserVideo in Chicago. My best information is that the first master costs $7500 to $20,000+. Then, production CD costs are very low. Meridian Data in Soquel, California offers a CD-ROM simulation and development system for under $50,000 that runs on the IBM-PC. With that unit you can make your own CD from 9 track (mainframe) tape. While this answers part of your question, you seemed to be asking how Amiga software would be put on CD's. If so, this is a common misconception about CD's. While it should be possible to put executable programs on CD, that is not its most likely use. We are talking about 500+ MEGABYTES of storage. That is 5000 programs of 100K size !!! I could not afford that many commercial programs and I think the market would be too small for any commercial venture. What CD's do well is store data, lots and lots of data. All of the commercial CD's I have read about store only data and they store it in a format which could be read by any computer with a proper interface (including device driver) and a proper applications program to read the data format. The Amiga can be hooked to a proper interface (SCSI) at the present time. If the Amiga interface manufacturer's make a CD-ROM device driver, then applications programers could start writing programs to use this data. At the present time IBM users have access to a device driver and applications programs which allow access,on CD, to a wide variety of reference libraries. A significant portion of this CD data is commercial data stored in a binary format which only the "official" application program can read without the threat of a lawsuit. The IBM application program generally comes on a floppy disk and the CD is reserved for the data itself. However that situation is changing as everyone salivates over the millions of GIGABYTES of PUBLIC data that Uncle Sam has on 9 track tape. (Continued next message)

(Continued from prior message, here is where I turm my flame on). Several commercial concerns are attempting to secure a portion of this huge government PUBLIC information. It is frequently stored on 9 track tape in sequential files of 8-bit ASCII data which can be purchased for $100-300 to cover the cost of the tape and handling. These commercial concerns then convert the data to 9 track tape in a binary format with some simple but "unique" format, and have the data put on CD. VIOLA, the information is now proprietary, can be sold for a thousand dollars per CD, and another innovative fellow gets rich on data acquired with our tax dollars. Fortunately, Uncle Sam is looking at releasing its data on CD (See efforts of SIGCAT). If this effort prevails any computer that can read 8 bit ASCII and drive a CD-ROM will have access to the data for the cost of the disk plus a few bucks. So far, only IBM has the device driver and applications programs to open up the field. I want the Amy in there also. The first U.S. Government CD is now available for $35.00. It contains U.S. Geological Service mapping data. If I could buy a CD-ROM device driver at any reasonable price, I would gladly spend the $1000 to purchase the CD-ROM, SCSI interface, and Sony or Phillips machine. Then I would write an applications program to use that data. Any mediocre programmer with a knowledge of cartography could do so. At that point the Amiga could join the Big Blue Market (IBM and compatibles) as a potential market for applications programs to use government data on CD-ROM. The Amiga is especially well suited for this because it can access 8 MEG of memory. Unfortunately, this is all of no avail without a device driver which allows the Amiga to read (at least) ASCII files from a CD-ROM. I know almost nothing about the SCSI interface or the High Sierra data storage format. But, I do have adequate knowledge to use that data, and other data, in an applications program. I want the Amiga to be part of the parade from the beginning. If you or anyone else can help me in generating interest in a CD-ROM device driver for the Amiga, I would appreciate it.