CD Changer Q's.....

[BC]

I have a program that uses like 5-6 CD's. I thought about getting a cd changer to put in my pc. Does anyone have info on these? Thanks,
Brian

[bobcat]

My experience sort of sucked. Lets say I put in a disk in drive 3. It autoruns and I start playing the game. It goes to hit the CDROM, but the stupid thing would cycle through all the CDROMs before it got to the game CDROM. It got old real fast. Granted I bought this puppy 2-3 yrs ago, things may have changed.

[Eli]

I have a four disk quad speed changer made by NEC that for the life of me I could not get to work properly in my PII300. It did install without a hitch (as long as it was alone on it's own IDE chain) in an old 486/33 and a P75 (where it currently resides), which makes my earlier problems seem even more odd. It's really slow (more because of the already-mentioned drive scanning thing than the fact it's a quad speed), but it is pretty cool. I just keep feeding CDs into the same slot one after another. I'll never get over that. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Ed_S]

I've got that same NEC changer. The disk scanning is a pain and prevents it from being really useful for anything that needs high-speed access to multiple disks. Great for things like encyclopedias, mapping apps, etc. I leave these in it most times for easy access.
Like most hardware, it depends on what you do with it. If you do get one, definately turn off autorun!

[BC]

Yes in fact what I am going to do with it is quite simple. I have 5 or 6 disks as part of a program that is a parts look up system. Like chilton sort of on cdroms. I wish they would just make it on DVD but that is a different story. So I am not really going to be putting many other types of disks in there. And I have seen them in the 16x & SCSI versions. I think that is what I am looking at doing now is SCSI. Do you still have the same problems with SCSI?

Thanks for the info. Really helps.

[Ed_S]

Should do fine for this from my experience. It will slow down your boot time, that's unavoidable.

I would contact the program's maker to be sure this is supported, be a pain to set up the hardware only to find the program will only look for data in one location.

BTW, I'm in the auto parts business so am interested in the outcome, might even be interested in the program!

[Nathan]

Yes they are a pain. However, there might be another option for you. With the hard drives as big as they are now, why not just copy them to a partition on the hard drive? Create a d drive and make directories for each CD.

5 CD's hold 650 MB each. Total of 3.25GB each. You can add a second drive, if that's possible, to hold all of them. After all, we copy the cabs files over to the hard drive so we don't need to insert the 95/98 CD into the CD-rom, right?

[This message has been edited by Nathan (edited 01-08-2000).]

[BC]

Great suggestion Nat! However that is what I am currently doing. That was my first reaction that is why I say it was great. They come out with updates about once a quarter and I have 4 locations to update. And the software makers don't make it that easy to update it to the HDD. They have new stuff about the service side all the time. So my options are limited. I have a CD tower at 1 location this seems to take care of them for now.
Ed_S it is for a big equipment like dozers and stuff so I don't think that it will help you there. Sorry but I have seen chilton on CDROMS. I think they have support for data at a single source the current configuration is like such:

The Server side of the program is installed on a PC on HD D: and the "books" are installed in a subdirectory underneath D: and all the client pc's see the books from this installed directory. Should work with a Changer right?

[Ed_S]

Sounds like it should work, since it is working with your CD tower. The OS sees the changer as several separate drives, each with it's own letter.


You're right, heavy equipment wouldn't help us. I'm at a Ford dealer in wholesale parts & we're looking at alternative software suppliers. Ford's "Dealer Computer Service" is just...
'Nuff said, never know who's reading!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif

[BC]

Well it's not working with the tower another location has the tower. I am going to put at smaller locations these little cd changers. I know what you mean about the software to be.... that is what i am dealing with.