SCSI cd - burning questions

[Glenn - Audio&Media Europe nv]

Well, this isn't an easy one... (at least nogt for me )

I recently started working with this company, and until now they have always
burned cd's in a time - consuming way. We have to burn about 500 cd's in a
little more than a week time, and this all was being done manually, on 5
write- capable pc's. Quite some of tose cd's (about 35%) are copies.

Now, I want to speed this up.
I havn't got any experience with SCSI, but installing it in some of the
newer systems here; I know there is Wide SCSI, and High and Low voltage; but
couldn't find any info on those topics with the drives / cards (bulk...). So
I just jumpered the drives (SCSI PlexWriter model PX-W4012TS - or the older
variant, but I want to update the old ones) to 2 different ID's, hooked them
up to the cable our supplier delivered (a 50-pin cable with 3 connectors),
and connected it to a SCSI-card (Adaptec AIC-7850 PCI).
Thank god for Plug & Pray, it worked.

I did a bit of research on software and settings, and I think I need
software that is capable of writing to more than 1 SCSI-station. We
currently use "CeQuadrat WinOnCD 3.70.572", which doesn't even support 40x
writing, while the PlexWriter clearly does. It also isn't capable of writing
to more than one cd-r station.

Now, the questions :

Can anyone give me a few good links to sites where I can self-study, I want
to know wheter my drives are Wide or Narrow, HVD or LVD (I think LVD, so no
terminator needed, not?); if it's possible to use cables with more
connectors, so more drives; and what software I need to use to burn to more
than 1 drive at once.

Or, if anyone has a better solution for this problem? We rent computers with
MP3's on them, and the cd's we burn are the monthly updates with 150 MP3
songs on them (don't worry, we have a SABAM license). The manager said
something about a burning robot, but that thing is super $$$, and I would
like to speed it up at this time already.
Please, this proces is of critical importance to me, any help is most
appreciated !

Glenn.

 

[Glenn - Audio&Media Europe nv]

Oh, small correction : 'we' don't 'rent' the computers with mp3's, the
computers are 'for hire' FROM us. So we supply these pc's.

 

[Rick]

Well, this isn't an easy one... (at least nogt for me )

I recently started working with this company, and until now they have always
burned cd's in a time - consuming way. We have to burn about 500 cd's in a
little more than a week time, and this all was being done manually, on 5
write- capable pc's. Quite some of tose cd's (about 35%) are copies.

Ridiculous. That's what CD duplicators are for. For the cost of a few
runs your company could buy a 10, 20 or 30-disk duplicator and save
tons of money every month.

Now, I want to speed this up.
I havn't got any experience with SCSI, but installing it in some of the
newer systems here; I know there is Wide SCSI, and High and Low voltage; but
couldn't find any info on those topics with the drives / cards (bulk...). So
I just jumpered the drives (SCSI PlexWriter model PX-W4012TS - or the older
variant, but I want to update the old ones) to 2 different ID's, hooked them
up to the cable our supplier delivered (a 50-pin cable with 3 connectors),
and connected it to a SCSI-card (Adaptec AIC-7850 PCI).
Thank god for Plug & Pray, it worked.

I did a bit of research on software and settings, and I think I need
software that is capable of writing to more than 1 SCSI-station. We
currently use "CeQuadrat WinOnCD 3.70.572", which doesn't even support 40x
writing, while the PlexWriter clearly does. It also isn't capable of writing
to more than one cd-r station.

Now, the questions :

Can anyone give me a few good links to sites where I can self-study, I want
to know wheter my drives are Wide or Narrow, HVD or LVD (I think LVD, so no
terminator needed, not?); if it's possible to use cables with more
connectors, so more drives; and what software I need to use to burn to more
than 1 drive at once.

1. Forget about HVD. As far as I know no one ever manufactured
a high-voltage differential CD burner.

2. Your SCSI drives are narrow SCSI, because they have 50-pin
connectors on the back. (If they were wide SCSI they would have
68-pin connectors.)

3. Determining whether drives are single-ended or LVD (low-voltage
differential) is a bit harder, although not for CD burners. Almost all of
them, including your Plextors, are single-ended.

4. SCSI chains MUST be terminated at the two physical ends of the
bus, regardless of whether they're LVD or single-ended, and all
devices in between the two physical ends must have termination
disabled. The easiest way to keep track of this is to simply use a
terminated cable (if you're not already) and disable termination on
all devices (except the controller, if that's the other end of the bus).

5. Your Adaptec 7850 will handle a maximum of seven burners, and
as long as you have a cable with enough connectors you shouldn't
have any problem adding more. Since the controller and devices are
single-ended, you are limited to roughly 10 feet of cable for the entire
SCSI bus. Much longer than that and you'll start running into signal
problems. This effectively limits the number of devices you can add,
unless you go to a dual channel card or use multiple SCSI cards.
But you should be able to get at least four or five drives on the bus
and still keep within 10'.

6. The best multi-drive burning software that I have first-hand
experience with is RecordNow Max:
http://www.stompinc.com/recordnowmax/index.phtml?stp
http://www.stompinc.com/recordnowmax/platinum-retail.phtml?stp

Check with them about compatibility with your Plextor drives.

Or, if anyone has a better solution for this problem? We rent computers with
MP3's on them, and the cd's we burn are the monthly updates with 150 MP3
songs on them (don't worry, we have a SABAM license). The manager said
something about a burning robot, but that thing is super $$$, and I would
like to speed it up at this time already.

For the cost of the drives, cable, an external SCSI enclosure and
burning software you can build your own duplication station at a
fraction of what they cost pre-assembled.

Rick

 

[Glenn - Audio&Media Europe nv]

Tnx for the fast reply!


-crop-

Ridiculous. That's what CD duplicators are for. For the cost of a few
runs your company could buy a 10, 20 or 30-disk duplicator and save
tons of money every month.

Maybe I wasn't very clear in my explanation... Off the 500 cd's, about 60
are duplicates (20 same, 10 same, 5 same, ...); so the rest of the cd's (and
that's still a 400-some) are all unique - I don't think a duplicator will
come in handy for that, or am I mistaking? Per month we need to make a
minimum of 350 brand-new cd's, all different.

1. Forget about HVD. As far as I know no one ever manufactured
a high-voltage differential CD burner.
clear!

2. Your SCSI drives are narrow SCSI, because they have 50-pin
connectors on the back. (If they were wide SCSI they would have
68-pin connectors.)

got that..
..

3. Determining whether drives are single-ended or LVD (low-voltage
differential) is a bit harder, although not for CD burners. Almost all of
them, including your Plextors, are single-ended.

What's the difference between single - ended and LVD? I know there is LVD
and HVD, but what does single-ended have to do with that?

4. SCSI chains MUST be terminated at the two physical ends of the
bus, regardless of whether they're LVD or single-ended, and all
devices in between the two physical ends must have termination
disabled. The easiest way to keep track of this is to simply use a
terminated cable (if you're not already) and disable termination on
all devices (except the controller, if that's the other end of the bus).

I just got these IDE-cable resembling SCSI cables. (look completely the
same, only physically wider than a 80-pins IDE cable). Now in this PC the
cable has 3 connectors; one connected to the Adaptec, the other 2 to 2
writers. But if I would use this cable with one card and one writer, do I
need to terminate the 3rd connector? And, how can I tell if the cable is
terminated?
Also, the 2 PlexWriters in this PC seem to have the jumpers set to 'TERM',
but they both work. I'll remove the jumpers, but why is that exactly?

5. Your Adaptec 7850 will handle a maximum of seven burners, and
as long as you have a cable with enough connectors you shouldn't
have any problem adding more. Since the controller and devices are
single-ended, you are limited to roughly 10 feet of cable for the entire
SCSI bus. Much longer than that and you'll start running into signal
problems. This effectively limits the number of devices you can add,
unless you go to a dual channel card or use multiple SCSI cards.
But you should be able to get at least four or five drives on the bus
and still keep within 10'.

I've got the burners set up in a server BIG case, with 6 5" bays, so the
distance isn't a problem. Space limitations restrict me to internal writers.

6. The best multi-drive burning software that I have first-hand
experience with is RecordNow Max:
http://www.stompinc.com/recordnowmax/index.phtml?stp
http://www.stompinc.com/recordnowmax/platinum-retail.phtml?stp

Check with them about compatibility with your Plextor drives.

Will check them today, tnx for the link!

For the cost of the drives, cable, an external SCSI enclosure and
burning software you can build your own duplication station at a
fraction of what they cost pre-assembled.

Rick

Well, that's why I said I don't need to 'copy' that much... And thats why
the manager wants a 'robot', because a robot can handle batches, and a
duplication station can't... Or maybe it can, but it still requires manual
loading of cd - trays. Also, the company is expanding, and when we reach the
1000 clients, well writing 1000 cd's manually per month is just too much.

Thats why I want a semi-temporary fast solution, to continue with present
hardware as long as possible....

Hey, you helped me out quite a bit, big thanks man!

Glenn.

 

[Glenn - Audio&Media Europe nv]

4. SCSI chains MUST be terminated at the two physical ends of the
bus, regardless of whether they're LVD or single-ended, and all
devices in between the two physical ends must have termination
disabled. The easiest way to keep track of this is to simply use a
terminated cable (if you're not already) and disable termination on
all devices (except the controller, if that's the other end of the bus).

-------->Well, you are a bit wrong here... this is from the plextor site :

-----On host adapters the termination is usually enabled by default. You
don't have to change the termination if you use only internal SCSI devices
or only external SCSI devices. With most Adaptec host adapters you don't
even need to be concerned about SCSI termination, since many boards
automatically adjust their termination for different configurations.
However, always check the adapters manual when connecting both internal and
external SCSI devices!-----

(source : http://www.plextor.be/english/technical/scsi.html )

6. The best multi-drive burning software that I have first-hand
experience with is RecordNow Max:
http://www.stompinc.com/recordnowmax/index.phtml?stp
http://www.stompinc.com/recordnowmax/platinum-retail.phtml?stp

--------> This soft doesn't support our Plex'es. But, on the other hand...
No software does. See for yourself...
link :
http://www.plextor.be/English/technical/recsoft.asp?sort_by=Manufacturer&Model=PX-W4012TS

and, seemingly, more Plextor writers seem to have this problem... :
http://www.plextor.be/English/technical/recsoft_full.asp?sort_by=Manufacturer

Shoddy... And I thought they were leading SCSI writer manufacturers.

 

[Rick]

Forgot to ask :

Is there any chance of data loss / buffer underrun / ... when writing to
multiple cd-r 's ?

If the hardware isn't configured properly, yes.

RickW

 

[Rick]

-------->Well, you are a bit wrong here... this is from the plextor site :

-----On host adapters the termination is usually enabled by default. You
don't have to change the termination if you use only internal SCSI devices
or only external SCSI devices. With most Adaptec host adapters you don't
even need to be concerned about SCSI termination, since many boards
automatically adjust their termination for different configurations.
However, always check the adapters manual when connecting both internal and
external SCSI devices!-----

(source : http://www.plextor.be/english/technical/scsi.html )

What Plextor is saying is, Adaptec >controllers< will automatically
enable or disable >their own< termination. This has absolutely
nothing to do with properly configuring the OTHER end of the
bus, or with any other device on the bus. In other words, you
can leave the controller set to "Auto", but you must still properly
configure the rest of the SCSI bus.

Just remember this: the two physical ends of the bus must be
terminated, and any devices in between the two physical ends
must have termination disabled.

--------> This soft doesn't support our Plex'es. But, on the other hand...
No software does. See for yourself...
link :
http://www.plextor.be/English/technical/recsoft.asp?sort_by=Manufacturer&Model=PX-W4012TS

and, seemingly, more Plextor writers seem to have this problem... :
http://www.plextor.be/English/technical/recsoft_full.asp?sort_by=Manufacturer

Shoddy... And I thought they were leading SCSI writer manufacturers.

Don't assume just because your model isn't on the list, that it won't
work or isn't supported. Most often it'll work just fine, but simply
didn't exist when the compatibility list was published. Contact
them and ask.

Rick

 

[Glenn - Audio&Media Europe nv]

Tnx for the reply,

about the robot : the robot is going to be purchased anyway. A robot isn't a
"copy machine", it can burn lots of batches (over 100) without manual
loading & labeling. Copy stations and such are not necessary, simply because
we already have about 12 SCSI writers, and it's just as fast to write about
5 copies on one pc in SCSI. And, if making copies, I still have to burn the
original to copy from.
Ah, and I doubt it if software that can burn to multiple writers, can burn
different data to different writers, I think it can only burn copies.

Still, many thanks for the replies!

Lessee now.....
You can't really use a CD duplicator for all the disks because most of
them are one off compilations, right? Thus they are incredibly time
consuming to burn individually and there are actually only a limited
number of current burners available to you. I'm assuming your
licensed MP3s are located on a central server and spit down the line
to the individual stations where you burn them.

1) The SCSI CD burners you have or will be getting are 'narrow' 50pin
SCSI interface. Even a cheap $10 Adaptec 2940 will run 7 CD burners
on a 50 pin cable; that's a 50pin narrow SCSI cable with 8 connectors
on it. You can jumper the last CD burner on the cable to terminate
the segment.

2) You are limited to 7 on the cable because you cannot jumper them to
an ID over 7, and you only want to jumper them up to ID6 (ID0 is also
an option you can use).

3) SCSI CD-RWs are more expensive, generally than IDEs. For those
copies of CDs (assuming you don't get the old ones back),
Here's a 1 => 7 CD duplicator for 1395 Euros.
Not too shabby, copying 1 CD to 7 CDs at a time at 52X speeds would
certainly cut down on your labor intensive burning....
Seems to me this is only about the price of a good system, and not the
"super $$$" that your burning robot is going to cost.
Press a button and walk away whilst the system makes 7 copies.

http://www.meriones.be/52_7_specs.htm

good luck.....

Well, this isn't an easy one... (at least nogt for me )

I recently started working with this company, and until now they have always
burned cd's in a time - consuming way. We have to burn about 500 cd's in a
little more than a week time, and this all was being done manually, on 5
write- capable pc's. Quite some of tose cd's (about 35%) are copies.

Now, I want to speed this up.
I havn't got any experience with SCSI, but installing it in some of the
newer systems here; I know there is Wide SCSI, and High and Low voltage; but
couldn't find any info on those topics with the drives / cards (bulk...). So
I just jumpered the drives (SCSI PlexWriter model PX-W4012TS - or the older
variant, but I want to update the old ones) to 2 different ID's, hooked them
up to the cable our supplier delivered (a 50-pin cable with 3 connectors),
and connected it to a SCSI-card (Adaptec AIC-7850 PCI).
Thank god for Plug & Pray, it worked.

I did a bit of research on software and settings, and I think I need
software that is capable of writing to more than 1 SCSI-station. We
currently use "CeQuadrat WinOnCD 3.70.572", which doesn't even support 40x
writing, while the PlexWriter clearly does. It also isn't capable of writing
to more than one cd-r station.

Now, the questions :

Can anyone give me a few good links to sites where I can self-study, I want
to know wheter my drives are Wide or Narrow, HVD or LVD (I think LVD, so no
terminator needed, not?); if it's possible to use cables with more
connectors, so more drives; and what software I need to use to burn to more
than 1 drive at once.

Or, if anyone has a better solution for this problem? We rent computers with
MP3's on them, and the cd's we burn are the monthly updates with 150 MP3
songs on them (don't worry, we have a SABAM license). The manager said
something about a burning robot, but that thing is super $$$, and I would
like to speed it up at this time already.
Please, this proces is of critical importance to me, any help is most
appreciated !

Glenn.

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