Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    it is true.  But CBM also has a tradition of developing a lot of
    things that never actually ship.  They are also supposed to be working
    on a new 8 bit computer.
    
    I'd settle for just an Amiga CD interface.  Atari has been promising
    a CD player for a couple years, but the price of the hardware isn't cheap
    enough yet (I think they wanted to sell it for $600, it would be
    capable of reading CD ROMs and playing music CDs).  Anybody know
    what the current prices in the pc world are for something that can
    do that?
    
    -Dave
    

    FWIW: they are not working on a new 8-bit computer. They are sitting
    on it. The computer is essentially complete and ready to go to market,
    over Copperman's dead body. I suspect that a CD interface or drive
    would stand a much better chance of getting out the door.

    What do you mean by CD interface?  VIVA authoring system already
    lets you interface to CDs as well as the Director.  It seems like
    there were a couple of others as well that we listed in the Amiga
    World magazine that had Multimedia as its main theme (Jan 90? -
    it even listed the CD players supported)
    

    re .3
    
    Whoops!  I was in a different world when I wrote that one.  I got
    my CDs and Laser disks confused.  The references in .3 are to laser
    disks which are video based - not music on CDs or data on CD roms.
    

Re: .1

>    I'd settle for just an Amiga CD interface.

I think you've already got that.  It's called a SCSI host adapter.
The problem is that no one has written any AmigaDOS filesystem that
reads any standard CD/ROM formats.

    
    
    	Yes, SCSI is the interface to connect CDROMS to an Amiga. The
    CDROM drive DEC uses in the 3100 systems, is a SCSI drive that uses
    the disk common command set. This means it looks exactly like a very
    big disk.
    	You should be careful that the CDROM drive you buy supports the
    disk common command set. If not you will need a special driver.
    
    		Steve Peters
    		Tape/Optical Eng.
    

    If you had a track-disk type driver suitable for use with a SCSI CDROM
    could you use CrossDOS to read MS-DOS compatible CDROMS ?
    
    Mike

    re .7
    
    	The idea of using crossDos will not work. The CDROM disks are not
    in MS-DOS format. CDROM use something called ISO 9660 . This standard
    was written for use with CDROM only.
    
    	Steve Peters
    

Re: .7

The driver isn't a problem: as .6 points out that the CD/ROM drive
(or at least the right type of CD/ROM drive) acts just like a
SCSI disk.  Therefore, the device driver that you would use would
just be the device driver you would normally use.

In other words, in the mountlist entry for the CD/ROM drive, the
Device= line would look the same as the Device= for any of your
hard disks.  The system can access any particular block on the
CD/ROM the same way it can access any block on a hard disk, and
that is the only thing that a device driver needs to know.

However, the layout of data on the CD/ROM is different.  Block number
10000 might be the start of the root directory on an AmigaDOS hard disk,
but on a CD/ROM block number 10000 might data in the middle of
a file.  CD/ROM directory entries probably look completely different
from AmigaDOS directory entries, as well as being stored at different
block numbers.  The interpretation of the blocks on a disk is controlled
by the file system mounted on the device.

In other words, the mountlist entry for the CD/ROM would have a
FileSystem= entry that doesn't say FileSystem=l:fastfilesystem,
but might say something like FileSystem=l:cdromfilesystem.

I don't know enough about CrossDOS to know if it will work with
alternate device drivers (I bought CrossDOS months ago from System
Eyes but haven't used it yet).  I remember that CrossDOS also provided
an alternate device driver for the floppy drives.  As long as CrossDOS
didn't make the MS/DOS file system rely on special device commands in
the special floppy handler, you should be able to use the CrossDOS
MS/DOS file system with a CD/ROM (or a hard disk, for that matter).

I'm no expert on CD/ROMS.  I was under the impression that there was
a standard format for CD/ROMs laid out called "High Sierra."  I don't
know if all or most CD/ROMs use this format, or if most CD/ROMs are
in a machine specific format that imitates the normal disk format of
the machine.

    So, ok,
    
    CrossDos doesn't  do the job, but as I thought its 'simply' a
    filesystem handler rather than a whole device driver that is needed ??
    
    Regards
    	Mike

Re: .10

Exactly right!

Any volunteers to write the needed file system?

    re .9
    
    	Randy is right about "High Sierra" format. The working group for
    CDROM formats was called High Sierra. This format was later submitted
    to ISO and became ISO 9660.
    
    re .11
    
    	I have been looking into writing a CDROM file system. Right now
    this is low on my to-do list, but if I found something on CDROM I
    wanted it might get done.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    Just curious -- has anyone tried to connect an RRD40 to their system?
    I have access to one which is just collecting dust.  Although it seems
    like it would be compatible in terms of SCSI protocol, the cabling
    would present a problem (especially for someone who is not hardware-
    oriented).  Then, too, there is a question of what you would be able
    to do with it once it was connected...  Any thoughts on this?
    
    Dave

    
    re .13
    
    	Yes, a RRD40 will work on an AMIGA. The SCSI connector is a
    standard 50 pin flat ribbon cable. The SCSI commands set for the
    RRD40 follows the ANSI specification for SCSI DISK common command set
    ( SCSI-I ). We when through a lot of work to make it look like a disk.
    The only problem is data format of the disk. You need to write your
    own file system handler. DEC's CD uses a subset of ODS-2 called
    UNIFILE. The rest of the world uses ISO 9660 file system on CDs.
    
    	After the file system was working, you need software that
    understands the data.
    
    		Steve Peters
    		Tape/Optical Eng.
    		( currently with the SCSI buyout group ).