Thanks for all the responses, I forwarded the info. to the guy interested
in pourchasing one, and he supplied me with this summary :-
----- Begin Included Message -----
The following summarises the information that was received in response
to our message concerning software for read/write optical disk drives:
1) If you dont need anything fancy then the Sun SCSI driver will work
fine with the Sony drive (mh@awds.imsd.contel.com)
2) There is a range of driver packages available and they all seem to
do the job adequately (noone complained about any of them).
- CONSULT-MO from Sun Australia ($Aus1805)
- MO-SOL from Instar Corporation ($US280)
- Artecon (from UnixPac in Australia) (software about $Aus2000)
Most comments were received about the Artecon package, all positive
except for one negative comment about technical support.
3) A couple of the packages advertise the feature of allowing non-root
users to mount/unmount platters. This seems to me to be a major plus.
The packages are Artecon and MO-SOL.
4) "TenX make a box which has the optical look like a disk to the system,
so you do not need to hassle with drivers." (alex@daemon.CNA.TEK.COM)
5) There appeared to be 2 models of Sony Magneto-Optical Disk drives -
the SMO-S501 and the NWP-559. Checking with Sony revealed that these
are identical drives marketed by 2 different departments of Sony.
Regards
Paul T.
----- End Included Message -----
He has decided to buy the sony disk rather than one of the other faster
optical disks (hitachi tahiti ?) because it conforms to iso standards, and
I think he chose the artecon as being the safest bet (plus users being able
to mount/unmount etc).
Thanks again
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bill Hart Internet : hart@ocean.ml.csiro.au
CSIRO Division of Oceanography Phone : +61 02 206 446
Hobart, Tas., 7000 Australia Fax : +61 02 240 530
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