Thomas Mueller wrote:

>  >The original Apple CDROM drive will read the commercial "pressed"
>>CDROMs (like the Redbook one) with no trouble, but cannot read the
>>CD-Rs that you burn yourself.
>
>>Incidentally, I have a NEC 2x drive model unknown (no label on it)
>>which works with its own Control Panel under Mac OS, but isn't
>>recognized by NetBSD. Any one familiar with it?
>
>>Dan Killoran
>
>I think when a company sells CDRs, it's like what you would burn yourself?

Hardly ever. Except perhaps very small outfits (I think maybe the 
NetBSD distribution, although I don't know for sure). Generally if 
it's one guy making & selling the stuff, it is probably CD-R, because 
it isn't economical to press fewer than about 1000 disks.
But the pressed disks can be read by any machine, whereas the CD-Rs 
can only be read by slightly more recent ones.

>Is the NEC 2x drive SCSI, IDE/ATAPI or other, proprietary like the original
>Mitsumi?  Maybe you could check what the Mac OS Control Panel says?

It's SCSI, not IDE. It is probably proprietary, since it won't run 
with Apple's driver.

>When did the original Apple CDROM drive come out?

I got mine on a developer deal in 1989.

>  >I've never had problems with CDR on old CDROM drives, as long as the session
>>on the CDR is closed (old drives don't like multisession CDs), but some
>>of them don't want to read CD-RW.

As I said, the original Apple 1x drive won't read CR-Rs.

>  >--
>>Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
>>--
>
>Now just what are multisession CDs, and what is meant by the session 
>on the CDR
>being closed?  It can be assumed the old CD-ROM drive and the drive 
>used to burn
>the CDR (disk) would not be on the same computer.

A "session" is a section of the CD that is all written without 
interruption. The technical definition in the standard is probably 
more complex, but in practice that's it.

>Would all SCSI controllers with NCR 5380 chip have ISA interface?  I suppose
>they went out of production before the days of PCI.

A lot of 68k Macs have the 5380, which is a SCSI controller. E.g. the 
IIvx, and I think the ci.


Dan Killoran