DriveCD is a commercial product and is licensed for use on a single Macintosh computer. If you would like to use DriveCD on more than one Macintosh, site licenses are available. Your continued support helps us maintain DriveCD for you. Thank you.
This special OEM version includes technical support from NEC. It is a fully-functioning version, and is limited only by the direct support for your new NEC drive. Please call NEC if you have any questions or need further technical assistance.
The retail version of DriveCD supports all popular CD-ROM players for the Macintosh. If you have another drive, you can upgrade to the full working DriveCD for $30.00, directly through our office. Please contact us for more information.
This document contains important changes and additions to the DriveCD manual which were not included due to printing lead times.
• INTRODUCTION
DriveCD is the first commercial CD-ROM driver package to fully support Apple’s SCSI Manager 4.3 and include SCSI-2 implementation. SCSI Manager 4.3 is built into the ROM chips of the Macintosh Quadra 660AV, 840AV, all Power Macs and later machines and adds new features to the SCSI bus and faster data transfer. With SCSI-2, many more SCSI devices may be attached to the SCSI chain besides the seven “target” devices attached. To accommodate these new changes, SCSI-2 introduces “logical unit numbers” which are three digits long. For example, SCSI ID number zero is now 0.0.0. These three digit SCSI ID numbers are also sometimes called “long ID numbers”. DriveCD displays either SCSI-1 or SCSI-2 long identification numbers and takes full advantage of all the new features.
DriveCD will work on any Macintosh with a supported CD-ROM drive running System 6.0.8 or System 7.0, 7.01, 7.1, 7.1.2 or System 7 Pro. The software is fully compatible with the Macintosh PowerPC based computers.
• INSTALLATION NOTES
1) Be sure to install the files named High Sierra Access, ISO 9660 Access, Foreign File Access and Audio CD Access from the DriveCD floppy disk into your Macintosh System Folder. These files should be installed inside the Extensions folder and are necessary to read CD-ROM discs written in these file structures.
2) Also be sure that the DriveCD CDEV is installed in the Control Panels folder!
3) Remove any Extensions or Control Panels that support your CD-ROM drive ie: Apple CD ROM System Extension, etc.
Do not remove the AppleCD Speed Switch Control Panel or Apple Photo Access System Extension. (You may also leave the Apple CD remote INIT if you choose to use Apple’s CD Remote player.)
4) If you are using our Drive7rem or Mount Cache Control Panel un-check the SCSI ID number only at the address where the CD-ROM drive is located.
5) When you open the DriveCD Control Panel for the first time be sure there is a checkmark next to the SCSI ID number where your CD-ROM drive is listed. DriveCD can only load it’s driver if there is a checkmark at the CD-ROM drive’s address.
6) You must restart the Macintosh for the DriveCD software to load. You may also click on the “Mount” button to use a CD-ROM disc immediately. However, caching features will not be enabled until you restart.
7) If you have a CD-ROM driver extension or control panel installed in the System Folder that already supports your CD-ROM drive a message window will appear during start up. This is a safety feature of DriveCD that avoids crashing the system if more than one driver attempts to load for the same CD-ROM drive.
• MOUNTING A CD MANUALLY
In everyday operation you will want to start up the Macintosh with the CD-ROM drive and other SCSI devices powered on. Normally, if you do not have the CD-ROM drive turned on at start up time it will not be recognized by the Macintosh and you will have to restart to use it. DriveCD allows you to manually mount a CD on the Macintosh desktop even if you power "on" your CD-ROM drive after starting up. Here are the steps to manually mount a CD:
1) At the Macintosh desktop level, power on your CD-ROM drive using it’s power switch.
2) Go to the Control Panels folder and open DriveCD. It will automatically scan the SCSI bus looking for drives when you open it.
3) Insert the CD you wish to mount into your CD-ROM drive.
4) Click on “Rescan” if your CD-ROM drive is not displayed.
5) Click on the name of your CD-ROM drive in the DriveCD list.
6) The “Mount” button should now be available.
7) Click on “Mount”, the CD icon should now appear on your desktop and is ready to be used. Note that caching cannot take place until you restart.
• PHOTO CD COMPATIBILITY
DriveCD supports Kodak™ single and multisession Photo CDs. To view Photo CDs you must install a Photo Access system extension distributed by Apple or Kodak into your system folder. You must also install Apple’s Quicktime extension version 1.5 or later.
• INTERFACE CHANGES
The Cache Control interface (window) has changed slightly since the printing of the user manual. The "Disable Custom Icons" feature was added after the manual was printed.
• CACHE INTELLIGENCE
The Cache Control portion of the software is extremely powerful. DriveCD employs a proprietary intelligent caching algorithm which actually learns the users actions. Our testing shows no other caching scheme to be consistently faster or more reliable than DriveCD.
Unlike other caching programs, there is no need to restart the computer to optimize the caching process for different CDs. DriveCD does not consume large amounts of hard drive space building directory files nor is there any need to pre-set or teach the program which CD or application you will use.
• CACHE CONTROL SETTINGS
Each CD-ROM drive connected to the Macintosh may have its own individual cache setting and preferences designated by the Cache Control.
• DISABLE CUSTOM ICONS
Many commercial and custom CDs display small representations or icons of each file contained on the disc. When the “Disable Custom Icons” box is checked, icons containing graphics or thumbnails will be displayed with a generic icon. Using this feature speeds up access to the disc because each icon does not need to be read into memory to be displayed.
• DISABLE SYSTEM CACHE
When the “Disable the System Cache” box is checked, DriveCD will turn off Apple’s System cache only for the selected CD-ROM drive. Disabling the System cache means data that is cached in RAM by DriveCD will not be cached by Apple’s System cache. This avoids redundant caching of the same data and frees Apple’s System cache to work more effectively. Using this feature does not disable the Memory Control Panel Disk Cache settings for the rest of your system.
• QUICKTIME MOVIES
If you experience any "jerkiness" running QuickTime movies we suggest you disable
the caching feature of DriveCD. To disable caching, select the drive mechanism's name in the DriveCD window and click the "Cache..." button. The Cache Control window will appear. You may simply check the box called "Disable Driver Cache", press the OK button and restart. Don't forget to re-enable the caching after viewing the QuickTime movies.
• SPEED INCREASE
The Statistics window in the Cache Control window reports the actual performance you are getting with the DriveCD software. If the “Measure Performance” option is selected the program will report the percentage of speed increase. For example, if your speed increase is 100%, data is being accessed two times faster than normal. Be sure to read the statistics window before ejecting a CD-ROM disc. The statistics window is cleared whenever a CD-ROM is ejected in preparation for a new disc.
• AUDIO CD APPLICATION NOTES
AudioCD allows you to control the playing of multiple audio compact discs.
If you have more than one CD-ROM drive, open the DriveCD control panel, hold down the option button on your keyboard and click on the checkmark at the SCSI address where you'd like AudioCD to look for music playback. The checkmark will appear bolded, designating this SCSI address for audio CD playback.
1) The volume slider control only appears with CD-ROM drives that support a volume change via software. If no volume slider appears, the CD-ROM drive does not have this capability.
2) If you desire, you may use Apple’s CD Remote player version 4.0.2 or the AppleCD Audio Player v2.0 instead of AudioCD. DriveCD supports most of the features of Apple's players except for those which are proprietary such as random and repeat play, and custom playlists. Also, to eject an audio CD we recommend that you drag the icon to the Trash because Apple's player eject button will not work. Please keep in mind that Apple's software is designed to work specifically with Apple CD-ROM drives. We have done our best to add support for Apple's software but certain features (as previously mentioned) may not work.
3) AudioCD supports audio playback of multiple CD-ROM drives simultaneously. When you launch AudioCD a player window will appear for each of the CD-ROM drives connected with the SCSI ID number of each drive displayed. If you want to play multiple audio CDs and have previously closed any of the player panels, you must quit the program and re-launch it for multiple player windows to reappear.
4) AudioCD allows specific settings for playing compact audio discs.
Explanation of the “Settings” menu:
“Play when inserted”, with this option checked an audio CD will begin playing automatically when inserted.
“Play in background”, with this option checked an audio CD will play only if the AudioCD application is in the background.
“Repeat playing CD”, allows the disc to start over from the beginning when it reaches the last track.
“Stop on Quit/Close” stops and ejects the audio CD when the AudioCD application is quit or the player window is closed.
“Long Format SCSI ID”, displays the three digit SCSI-2 ID numbers.
5) For convenience you may create an Alias of the AudioCD program and drop it into the Startup Items folder inside the System Folder. This will launch AudioCD automatically when you start the Macintosh.
6) You may also install an Alias or the entire AudioCD application in the Apple Menu for easy access.
• MULTIPLE CD-ROM DRIVES
DriveCD fully supports multiple CD-ROM drives on the SCSI bus. However, should you experience any unusual behavior with CD-ROM drives or discs we suggest you temporarily disable DriveCD at one of the CD-ROM drives SCSI addresses, restart and re-mount the problem disc.
