SUMMARY: CD-ROM duplication

From: Maureen Kemp (mkemp@gislab.teale.ca.gov)
Date: Sun Jul 18 1993 - 00:38:41 CDT


My question was:

>
> We are looking for a CD-ROM Duplication system for distributing data. I
> have found a company called Trace which sells software and repackages Sony's
> DCW-900E for this purpose, but their software is designed for PCs.
> We are talking about low volume CD-ROM duplication in ISO 9660 format,
> and we would like to connect it to the SCSI bus of either our 4/690 file
> server or one of our Spark 1+ workstations. We are currently 4.1.3 but will
> probably migrate to Solaris in the next 6 months.
> Has anyone found a hardware/software system for doing this that would
> not require us to use the PC? I will summarize.
> Maureen Kemp
> Teale Data Center
> GIS Technology Center
> mkemp@gis.gislab.teale.ca.gov
>

I received 3 other recommendations. Some are PC based, some are both Unix and
PC based. I have contacted all of the vendors and will be receiving
information about their systems. The companies that I know of so far are:

   Trace
   1040 East Brokaw Rd
   San Jose, CA 95131-2939
   Phone: (800) 872-2318

   Young Minds, Inc
   1910 Orange Tree Lane, Suite 300
   Redlands, CA 92374
   Phone: (714) 335-1350
   Fax (714) 798-0488
   email: yngmnds!hornbeck@ucrmath.ucr.edu
   
   JVC-RomMaker or Archiver from Andronix
   Phone: (404) 804-0590
 
   Rimage Corporation
   Eden Prairie, MN
   Phone (800) 445-8288

Thanks from the following for their recommendations.
Peter Samuel peters@nms.otc.com.au
bukys@cs.rochester.edu
Dan A. Zambon dzambon@afit.af.mil
Bill Townsley townsley@rocky.er.usgs.gov
Gordon Lentz lentz@ody1.uchicago.edu
Gail Meglitsch ai6@rossini.cad.ornl.gov
Jon Mellott jon@alpha.ee.ufl.edu
Michael Baumann baumann@proton.llumc.edu
Mike Raffety miker@il.us.swissbank.com
Cheryl L. Southard cld@astro.caltech.edu
Jim Anderson jim@aob.aob.mn.org
Kevin Sheehan kevin@uniq.com.au

==================
Further infomation that may be of interest (edited):

>From bukys@cs.rochester.edu

I understand the write-once media are kind of expensive per copy,
so depending on what you mean by "low volume", you may change your
mind about mass duplication.

-----

>From Bill Townsley townsley@rocky.er.usgs.gov

CD Studio by Young Minds, Inc. carries a high price tag,
but is capable of ISO 9660 and Rock Ridge formatting. The
hardware interaces with Sun 3, 4 and SPARC platforms and the
user interface is OpenLook/Motif.

-----

>From Gordon Lentz lentz@ody1.uchicago.edu

The only one I could find that (i) worked on a Sun system, (ii) was capable of
producing all of Unix, ISO-9660 and ISO-9660/RockRidge disk formats,
(iii) supported a double-speed writer and (iv) had a fairly robust and proven
software package was Young Minds, Inc. "CD-Studio" system In addition, a system
(Portable File System) is available from them which allows RockRidge-extension
disks to be read on a Unix system whose standard driver does not support RockRidge
extensions. The also have an "Original Name Recovery" system so that a user can
recover the original name of a Unix file which had been truncated to ISO-9660
(8-character) standard length. Our salesman is David George (909)335-1350.

We bought one and may buy another soon. They work good; software is easy to
use and seems robust. Price is high (to Universities, $15,500 USD) but it
is not a toy. Includes a Phillips double-speed writer and a controller
(hooks to SCSI) which includes its own 1GB disk drive (you have to have this
dedicated drive to service the double-speed writer's speed.) For what you
get (in the market of 6 months ago -- other things I have not seen may be out
now) it is good value for the money.

For what it is worth, SunSoft uses this system for internal mastering. So does
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (from whom I got much of my evaluation-input).
It DOES work on a Sun!

-----

>From Gail Meglitsch ai6@rossini.cad.ornl.gov

I've been looking for the same kind of thing and have collected quite
a bit of literature. I have not as yet made the purchase but
the two products that look best to me for the UNIX platform are:
      cd-studio from young minds
      contact Candace Gore (909) 574-4634
      They are the pioneers of UNIX system writeable CD ROMs.
      Their software comes bundled with your choice of Kodak, phillips
      or Sony double speed recorders, uses a proprietary controller
      that is essentially a headless PC with 2 high speed SCSI adapters,
      one talking to the host and the other to a 1.2gig disk....

      JVC-RomMaker or Archiver from Andronix
      contact Steve Burroughs (404) 804-0590
      This option is a little cheaper, and a bit more flexible.
      Uses cheaper single speed JVC recorder BUT you can buy 2
      recorders for the price of one sony and run them in parallel.
      They claim that their pre-processing time is shorter and that
      even with one recorder they are about as fast as the young minds
      approach and with two, they obviously are faster.
      By the way, when you daisy chain sony double speed
      recorders they can only run single speed.

-----

>From Jon Mellott jon@alpha.ee.ufl.edu

Maureen,
  Byte Magazine did a review of several CD-Write devices sometime in
the last twelve months. The problem you're facing is that CD-Write
is very timing sensitive: once a write operation starts it must
continue without interruption until it's done. Unfortunately, since
Solaris 1/2 are Unix, they aren't very good at meeting hard real time
schedules required by CD-Write drives. As a result, the product I
recall seeing with Sun based software actually had a PC and a 600 MB
hard disk in the same box as the CD-Write drive (a Sony drive, I
believe).

  The point is, if you already have a PC you can interrupt for
occasional CD-write operations, or if you might like a PC,
you'd be better off using a commodity PC for those CD-write
operations as it'll probably be less expensive than the one
embedded in a CD-write drive, and certainly more useful.

-----

>From Michael Baumann baumann@proton.llumc.edu

Have you talked to Young Minds Inc, in Redlands CA?

They sell a CD-ROM mastering system, that will also do low volume duplication
using a phillips burner. The mastering system is installed in a PC chassis
with a PC motherboard providing control, but is run from the host machine
(SUN, or...) via the SCSI bus.
They will master ISO-9660, UFS, High-Sierra/Rock-Ridge (YMI helped create the
rock-ridge extensions, so I think they might know what they are doing :-)

-----

>From Cheryl L. Southard cld@astro.caltech.edu

Maureen,

I've found a company called Young Minds that sells just the device that
you are looking for. Their phone number is 909 335-1350.

Their device somehow hooks to your scsi bus and takes approximately 36
minutes to write a $650MB CD ROM. It complies with ISO 9660 format.

They quoted me $18,250 for the unit and $20 to $30 for the media.

-----

>From Jim Anderson aob!jim@kksys.mn.org

While it's not exactly an answer to your question, you might also want to
look at Rimage Corporation in Eden Prairie, MN (only about a mile from me).
They're the second or third largest duplicator manufacturer. They also
have a PC system for duplicating CD-ROMs (also diskettes and tapes). If you
do get stuck with a PC system, you might want to check them out too. Their
phone number is 612-944-8144 or 1-800-445-8288. From what I hear, their
stuff is better than Trace's, Trace just has a bigger market share.

 

                                Maureen Kemp
                                Teale Data Center
                                GIS Technology Center
                                Sacramento, CA
                                mkemp@gis.gislab.teale.ca.gov



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