On Fri, 12 Jan 2001, Ross Harvey wrote:

=> The coaster-effect is one reason I went with CD-RW ... you can work out
=> the bugs that way and then burn a CD-R for giveaway when it's perfected.
=> (Someday let me tell you about how this interacts with Murphy's law... :-)

If you're just starting with cdrecord, and don't know if your hardware
or software setup is up to speed, then the "-dummy" switch to simulate a
burn is also very handy.

=> However, you have a second problem. You really shouldn't even look cross-
=> eyed at your box when burning a CD. Don't even touch the keyboard or do
=> any network ops, never mind avoiding the encode or decode of mp3's.

On my DEC 3000/300 I can burn at 8X and go about my normal business, and
the system doesn't even appear to break out a sweat.  (Take a bow NetBSD
team!)  I even seem to recall burning during a "make build" of /usr/src.  
I can certainly read e-mail, browse the WWW using Netscape, edit with
emacs, and other normal activities.  It handles the load at 8X much
better than the DEC 3000/500S running Digital Unix 4.0D I use in the lab
burning at only 2X.  Mind you, on my 3000/300, I burn from a separate
"scratch" drive, so there's no disc seek/read contention with the rest
of the system.

Time to try cdrdao next...

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa