[GLLUG] Re: linux-user digest, Vol 1 #932 - 3 msgs

[Matt Graham]

On Thursday 16 January 2003 16:14, after a long battle with technology, 
Bruce Smith wrote:
> > Some very old CD-ROM drives (circa 1990) won't read CD-Rs at all.
> > Short of that, I haven't had any trouble.
>
> And CD drives much newer than that will not read rewritable media.
> I've found drives slower than _roughly_ 18X speed won't read CDRW.

The speed of the drive doesn't matter at all.  It's whether or not the 
drive has automatic gain control.  Remember that the land/pit 
reflectivity difference for a CD-R is roughly 85%/15%.  For CD-RWs, 
it's more like 20%/5%.  Drives with auto gain control will have the 
"multi-read" logo on them somewhere, and they should be able to read 
everything.  The really cheap drives will not have auto gain control, 
since it costs a few $/unit to implement.  Drives made before ~1998 
won't have it either.

> And even newer drives than that will not read the new 10X CDRW media.

The "high-speed" CD-RW media is a PITA, since you can't even write to it 
on "low-speed" CD-RW drives.  Until they fix these problems, 
"high-speed" CD-RW media will be useless for anything but making 
backups of specific machines.  Considering that you can buy 32x CD-Rs 
on a spindle for about $0.50/unit and high-speed CD-RWs cost about 10x 
that, the high-speed CD-RW may not even be worth it in the real world.  
YMMV.

-- 
   "Depress the button," it said.  Gloria looked at the button.  "You're
   a very ugly button," she began.  --Phil Janes, _The Galaxy Game_
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