Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!caip.rutgers.edu!trudel From: trudel@caip.rutgers.edu (Jonathan D. Trudel) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: CD storage (was No more Cinemaware stuff for Amiga !!!????) Message-ID:Date: 15 Aug 89 18:56:43 GMT References: <346@eagle.wesleyan.edu> <1523@ndmath.UUCP> <514@morgoth.UUCP> <121390@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 34 >...poof ready to roll CD disks. But for data disks you >have to set up the data, index it in some way. This requires that you >have access to all of it, and be able to change it, and that means a >500Mb magnetic disk that could "pretend" it was a CD until you were >ready to master it. With current SCSI technology you can do this for >under $3K, it used to be you needed a mini like a Sun or VAX to just >handle the data. Of course once you get all the data together the >indexing process can be slow at best. Define slow for me. I saw such a system set up on an IBM pc that my girlfriend's friend's husband was working on for a company down in the DC area (I don't remember the name of the company) and they are offering such a product as the one you describe. They are putting governmental records onto an optical disk and getting really reasonable data recovery from it. Considering that it replaces the previous microfiche technology, the access time is greatly improved. The only slowdown occurs for printing - normal photocopy processes are an order of magnitude faster than laser printing... >For hypertext like applications >you want to make sure related information is on physically "near" tracks >and the index stuff has to be pretty well filled in to make the disk >useful. >--Chuck McManis I think that for many data retrieval applications that the access time I saw in such a system was within reason. GRanted, we work with high-speed computers all day long, but many people don't, and are willing to put up with what we might perceive as slowness. But then again, isn't that what people said about computers 20 or 30 years ago? Jon