JIM HOLSONBACK wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

 JH> Hello, Roy.  I heard you talking with Tom Walker about - -

 RJT> Actually,  the stores around here were out of that particular drive.
 RJT> And after getting some runaround from one store (I ain't done with
 RJT> _that_ idiot yet!) this other store gave me a
"substitute" at a similar
 RJT> price.  It's a Cen-Dyne brand,  and their literature says that they
 RJT> have a year's warranty on it. We'll see how it goes...

 JH> The one I got a few weeks ago, I first asked the young fellow 
 JH> working on the floor, and all he told me was that they had sold 
 JH> out.  Then, I went over to the customer service desk and started 
 JH> asking, and BIR I was talking to the mgr on duty, and right away 
 JH> she offered me a substitute. That was the one I got really lucky 
 JH> on, and they sold it to me for 19.99 straight up, with no rebate 
 JH> submittal required.

Too bad I couldn't swing that kind of a deal...

 JH> I'm glad I saw your msg and that reminded me, so I went to the 
 JH> local OfficeMax today, and of course the shelf on the sales floor 
 JH> was out of the Polaroid brand drives. So I just walked over to the 
 JH> service counter again, and asked if they were out.  Right away, 
 JH> the young lady there called to a stockperson, who went to the
 JH> 'storeroom' and brought out a CenDyne 48x12x48 drive.  It would 
 JH> have cost $10 more than the Polaroid one, but they just adjusted 
 JH> the price to $50, so that after its $30 rebate, it will cost $20
 JH> just like the Polaroid would have.  Hee.

Yeah,  I get to play those games,  too.

 JH> It is probably the same one that you got - - Cendyne Model 4816P,
 JH> 48x12x48.

Mine says model "CW 4802" on the box bit that I kept after
cutting out the junk they want sent in.  Speeds are similar.

 JH> I see that its "System Requirements" include the following, 

 JH> 1.  Win 89SE, ME - - - etc., or NT4.0 Service Pack 4
 JH> 2.  PII 400 MMX or higher
 JH> 3.  UDMA/DMA support on mainboard
 JH> 4.  32MB RAM (64MB or more recommended)
 JH> 5.  HDD with access time of 15ms or less

Hee.  Says "15ns" here.

 JH> 6.  75MB free disk space (for recording software)
 JH> 7.  Available E-IDE port with UDMA support

This is pretty much the same as what I'm looking at here.

 JH> I'd expect that the CDROM part would work OK with DOS driver
 JH> Oakcdrom.sys as comes with Windows 95b, 98, etc., but you may have
 JH> some problems with the CD/RW part and the software as you try to
 JH> use it on your hardware there.

I hadn't intended to run it on a dos box.

 JH> I dunno why they call for UDMA support - - since 48 x 0.15 is
 JH> 7.2MB/s I don't see why even UDMA33 support would be required.

Says 7.200 KB/sec here too.  That's probably a transfer rate that doesn't
take into account how much faster you might want to go if you were filling
that buffer.

 JH> You'll probably be trying to get the drive to work before I get to 
 JH> the project where I want to use this one.  I'll probably be 
 JH> installing under Win98SE, so our installation paths will likely
 JH> diverge in any event.

Probably.

 JH> So please post here as you make progress with it. - - I'll be
 JH> interested in hearing about how you do with that.

I've got man pages for cdrecord and cdrdao up on the linux box,  and the cd
that came with the drive in this box,  in another window.  I have some
other files to look at as well,  before I get to starting to have a grip on
the software side of things.  On the hardware side I'm probably gonna pull
the 24x drive out of the OS/2 box that hasn't been turned on in some
months,  and put it and the burner in the linux box,  pull the 2x and the
4x4 out of there,  stick the 2x in the OS/2 box,  and put the changer in
_this_ box.  I *think* I have dos drivers for it around here someplace. 
  With any luck I'll get to some of this stuff this weekend. 
Though with the way some weekends have been going lately,  maybe not,  I
guess we'll see....

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