Kent Vander Velden writes:
> 
> laine@morningstar. com writes:
> >
> >For everyone's info - I tried the NEC 7 disk CD changer (2x)
> 
> >Another problem with them is they need those funky little micro-scsi
> >connectors (and no cable was included).
> >
> 
>   Ah, darn cable was expensive but it does come with a cable that you
> can use to daisy chain a Zip drive off the the changer.

I didn't even remember that - I just saw a bunch of cables, none of
which fit, and went into the machine room and stole one that did ;-)

> >Now the same store that had the NEC has the 6-disc Pioneer changer that
> >Jason mentioned (4x).

By the way, in case anyone was wondering, I figured out why I couldn't
mount disks on this Pioneer. I'm quite embarrassed to admit that it was
because I had put all the disks in upside down! (well, right side up
really - the Pioneer expects the shiny side to be up). Yes, I do spell
stupid with two o's.

>   As I recall the Pioneer had a very slow disk switch time compared to
> the NEC.  I forget where the article was that I read this... think it
> was in a recent issue of "PC Catalog."  If someone would like the
> information I can try to find the magazine.

I didn't *notice* this, but it could be possible. I still have both
drives, so I'll do some "dueling changers" tomorrow. Thanks for
mentioning this - I want to make sure I keep the better of the two
drives. 

One thing though - the Pioneer has so far mounted every disk I gave it
first time every time. No IO errors like I get with the NEC.

>   I have the same problem as well.  BTW: have you tried using the drive under
> Win95?  Obviously the people that tested Win95 did not have a CD changer
> since they surely would have complained about how they are handled.
> Seems as if Win95 will start to scan all the CD's once in a while with
> out any obvious reason.

Why am I not surprised? (Especially after seeing a note on the Samba
mailing list today about how MS VC++ 4.0 takes 30% of the CPU on a
remote disk server *even when the program is idle* because it is
constantly doing 2 and 4 byte reads of the files it has open.)

As a matter of fact, I am using the disk with a Win95 system, but only
remotely. I have (quite intelligently, it seems) connected the disk to a
NetBSD box running Samba, and mount the CDs on Win95 from there (I mount
all 6 disks under /cdrom/0 .. /cdrom/5 and export /cdrom to Samba). This
seems to work nicely, and also lets people with Sparcs and other unixen
mount the same disks via NFS. Fortunately, Win95 hasn't displayed the
problem you mention on remotely mounted CDs (but then, I haven't tried
viewing a file on a remote CD using MS VC++ 4.0 :-P )