Me and My Affordable CDROM
			 =========================


                              by Keith Antoine


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   Well you do not have to be worth a fortune to own the latest in file
  storage technology, a CDROM drive. I am the proud owner of a Matshushita
  CR501 drive and it will read any form of CD disk around: ISO 9660, HiSierra,
  CDTV, CD+g and lastly audio CDs.

   For some time since I read about CDTV in 1990 and later the release of the
  Xetec drive I had to have one of these awesome beasts. At the time I was
  the owner of an A500 with an A590 plus 52 Quantum and nowhere to stick the
  drive if I could afford one (no rude suggestions please especially from
  Randall). In September 92 I finally surrendered the 500 plus peripherals
  for a 2000 GVP Combo 50Mhz, 240 Quantum as I had bought OPALvision and
  could not find a suitable expansion bus for the 500 to fit it to. So at
  last I had the means to incorporate a CDROM (Compact Disc Read Only Memory)
  unit. I found that the prices of the drives had dropped a great deal in
  the intervening time and so made them more affordable.

   So what drive to buy and the software to run the beast? Well I found out
  much to my suprise that the Amiga Dealers knew nothing other than CDTV, and
  that was that. I also found that the IBM dealers knew a little more and were
  willing to talk to me but software NO. The prices varied dramatically from
  as little as $495 to over $1000. This poses the question why do the
  majority of amiga salespersons know so little about their supposed area of
  expertise and care so little too? There is a can of worms for someone to
  investigate. Any rate to carry on I found that the supposed read times
  varied, according to literature and the dealer, but more important was it
  had to be SCSI. Why scsi, well IDE cannot support more than one drive in a
  chain whilst scsi can go to 7 and I eventually wanted to add a Floptical
  and a tapebackup.

   Software was also a hard one to purchase, but as luck would have it a a
  dealer (Ami-Tech) advertised a special package deal for about $800 all up
  including software. I managed to procure from Rob Selff the software
  called XetecCDRom, this has now been updated to version 1.63 and comes with
  2 CDROM discs full of PD for $129. There also exists from Computer
  Discount stores software for $80 called CDRom-Fs, I must admit I have not
  tried this as the other does all I wanted it to do.

   So now I owned software but no drive and in casting around I finally
  decide to give the Pansonic a go at $495, the cheapest of the bunch. I was
  persuaded in my decision by the fact they are made by National and I had,
  over the years, great service from many of their products. For those of
  you in Qld I bought it from ANACOM Pty Ltd of Jindalee. John Grigore is
  the owner (279-3773) and is also a nice chap.

   I got it home destructed the 2000 and proceeded to screw the drive into
  the 5.25 drive bay, it fits perfectly. I went to Dick Smith's and purchased
  a metre of 50 strand cable and 4 terminals, they are easy to fit in a vice,
  to make a scsi cable long enough. I plugged it in along with the power,
  switched on and the drive powered up. Luckily the software has the nice
  install program we are now used to but it still took a while to get it
  right. If you have 1.3, and this somewhat applies to 2.04 also, you will
  have to fiddle with mountlists, drivers, handlers and devices. Those with
  2.1 the task is greatly reduced and made a great deal easier. However to
  cut a long story short I purchased an IBM disk and all of a sudden I could
  read the disk in OPUS.

   A day or two later I received my first Amiga compatible disk from Don
  Quixote software of Toowoomba. What a sight it was to see that big icon
  appear for Fish Disks 1-700 and to be able to read all 650Mb of data. I
  now have about six disks of data and am rigging up some speakers for the
  audio CDs, but I want Trivial pursuit next. So now I can run IBM disks,
  with a KCS board and Macs if I have the suitable hardware, CDTV disks etc.
  So for an initial outlay of between $580 and $630 you too can own one of
  these wee beasties and enjoy the latest technology.


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