Half on, half off -- New CD-R drive and 512-byte blocks

From: Carl Lowenstein <cdl_at_proxima.ucsd.edu>
Date: Tue Apr 9 16:58:57 2002

> From: Christopher Smith <csmith_at_amdocs.com>
> To: "Classiccmp (E-mail)" <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
> Subject: Half on, half off -- New CD-R drive and 512-byte blocks
> Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 15:17:56 -0500
>
> I just bought a new CD-RW drive -- a Sony CRX145s -- and am curious
> about whether it may read the 512-byte blocks necessary for using it
> as a backup boot device on my VAXen, Sparc, SGI, etc.
>
> Does anyone know whether this, or just for information, some other
> CD-RW unit, will do such a thing?
>
> Note that I do know that discs are written in 2048 byte blocks, and
> the answer won't affect its performance in writing disks on these
> systems. I am also aware that doing this for the long term may
> needlessly shorten the life of the drive. As I said above, it is
> more for curiosity, and eventually I would like to know that in case
> my RRD42 dies, I have a backup. :)

A minute or two with Google led me to
< http://sony.storagesupport.com/dlagreement.zulu?dlid=cdrw/downloads/Crx145s-c/CRX145SUM.pdf >
which is the manual for this drive. Looking carefully I see that it has
5 pairs of configuration jumper pins. Three for setting the SCSI ID,
one for termination, and one "test block do not jumper". Your guess is
as good as anyone else's.

    carl
-- 
        carl lowenstein   marine physical lab   u.c. san diego
                                          clowenstein_at_ucsd.edu
Received on Tue Apr 09 2002 - 16:58:57 BST

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