SCSI CDROM 'juke box' setup

From: Tothwolf <tothwolf_at_concentric.net>
Date: Fri Dec 13 03:13:00 2002

On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Don Maslin wrote:

> A while back, I acquired a 7-disk NEC MultiSpin 2Xc drive which uses a
> SCSI interface. With no particular difficulty, I installed the WD SCSI
> card and the drive, the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT patches and quickly
> had access to the drive. Well, I had access to the first disk in the
> drive. The existence of the remaining six were not acknowledged! The
> WD diagnostic program sees all seven, so I tend to doubt that it is a
> SCSI problem, but nothing that I have done relative to MSCDEX has had
> any useful effects either.
>
> For perspective, this testing is being done on a Pentium II 133MHz
> equipped motherboard with 16Mb memory running PCDOS 6.3. I have yet to
> try it with W98.
>
> Can anyone offer any hints, kinks, experience, or clues of any variety
> as to how to access the remaining 86% of this 'juke box'?

I dunno if your SCSI adapter's drivers support multiple LUNs, but thats
what these changers need in order to support multiple discs. It sounds
like the board itself detects all of the LUNs, so it may just be a
software setting that needs to be changed. Once the ASPI software and
cdrom driver detect all the LUNs, MSCDEX can be configured to add a drive
letter for each disc. I've used many older Adaptec and BusLogic/BusTek
boards with similar cdrom changers without any troubles.

One thing to keep in mind on the NEC cdrom changers, is that their audio
playback quality sucks. I have 3 of the 4Xc changers I use for data, but
they are terrible for audio playback. OTOH, some of the Pioneer cdrom
changers such as the 6 disc 604X from the same time period have excellent
audio playback, but they do have some issues with multi session and
"enhanced" audio discs. I've heard updated ROMs are/were available to fix
the problems with the Pioneer drives, but so far, I've not been able to
obtain them.

-Toth
Received on Fri Dec 13 2002 - 03:13:00 GMT