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Y L . . . . . . . . . . . R |-2 | | | | | SEACLIFF SOFTWARE | 1142 Pomegranate Court Sunnyvale CA 94087 408-733-4035 | NOTE: This material is copyrighted 1990 by Seacliff Software. Permission has been granted to Artisoft to place this material on their BBS for downloading. Use restrictions are the same as if you had found this material in a periodical or book. 9-14-90 Title: Accessing CD-ROM Drives Across a Network Subtitle: How to Use Specific CD-ROMs on a LANtastic Network by Robert E. Brown, President Seacliff Software 408-733-4035 The CD-ROM industry is immature--and it shows. The producers of CD-ROM disks seem to have given little or no thought to how their products can be used on networks--the very environment that clearly constitutes their greatest potential market. This document describes what has to be done to be able to access specific CD-ROMs across a LANtastic network. (We used LANtastic on Artisoft AE-2 16- bit Ethernet cards, but everything we say will apply equally to any LANtastic network--and most of it will apply to any DOS-based network.) No one should be lulled into believing that this is a piece of cake--we had problems with most of the CD-ROMs. But the final conclusion is decidedly upbeat: Of the 8 randomly selected CD-ROMs, we were eventually able to access all 8 across the network. Installing a CD-ROM drive typically entails a device driver in CONFIG.SYS followed by installation of the Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions (MSCDEX), usually in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. If you're using an operating system other than DOS, you're probably out of luck: Questions about 'OS/2' support were greated with 'OS What?'. Except for a few CD-ROMs that just consist of files that are intended to be copied selectively to your hard disk, the typical CD- ROM includes DOS-based access or retrieval software geared specifically to the contents of the CD-ROM. This retrieval software almost always checks to see if MSCDEX has been installed--and refuses to function if MSCDEX isn't installed. In the case of a workstation accessing the CD-ROM across the network, the retrieval software will be running in the workstation's ram; the retrieval software will therefore be checking for MSCDEX on the workstation. But MSCDEX is installed on the server, not on the workstation. Moreover, MSCDEX can't be installed on the workstation: MSCDEX can only be installed if the device driver for the drive is installed; and the device driver for the drive can only be installed on the machine that physically has the CD-ROM drive! This potentially crippling problem can usually be overcome by means of a small (5K plus your environment) TSR called MXSUB, written by Digital Solutions Pty Ltd. (PO Box 178, Margate, Qld 4019 | | | | | |-2 | | | - 2 - | | AUSTRALIA, 61-7-883-1851) and available from the Artisoft Bulletin Board. In essence, MXSUB tricks the retrieval software into thinking that MSCDEX is installed (by handling functions 00h and 0Dh). This works because in most cases the retrieval software makes no direct use of MSCDEX except to verify that it is installed. The Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions (MSCDEX) software is supplied by Microsoft to the drive manufacturers who customize it for their particular device driver. Therefore you can't buy MSCDEX from Microsoft--you have to get it from the drive manufacturer. This might be ok except that the same applies to the documentation. Of the several descriptions of the command-line options from various sources, only one mentioned a '/S' option, but there wasn't enough of an explanation to figure out what it was supposed to do. We also noted, for example, that the caching option of MSCDEX (Version 2.1) worked extremely poorly (even a 1 megabyte cache had no effect), but there wasn't enough documentation to understand what type of caching it was supposed to be doing. So we really couldn't determine if it was functioning properly or not. We called Microsoft...which predictably led nowhere. Provided you have expanded memory available, MSCDEX will take about 24K of base memory. It can be loaded in a DESQview window in order to avoid impacting other applications. (However, you then cannot close down and reopen that window during the same session: once you open a CD-ROM window, you have to keep it open--though of course you can switch to other windows and back. Like the network software, MSCDEX becomes so intimately intertwined with DOS that it can't be unloaded or reloaded. Indeed MSCDEX is closely related to the network software: Once MSCDEX is run on a workstation, the drive letters used by MSCDEX will automatically show up as redirected network drive letters.) The access software supplied with the various CD-ROMs seems to range from hopelessly confusing to hopelessly defective, though we did see some improvement during the review process as new versions of the software arrived. A variety of idiotic requirements will also be noted, e.g. some CD-ROMs only work when in the first position of a 6-disk CD-ROM cartridge and some CD-ROMs only work when in drive L:. Fortunately these apparent restrictions usually reflected inadequate documentation rather than inherent limitations. In many cases crucial features of the software were undocumented-- requiring many long distance phone calls. A few CD-ROMs are even missing a volume label. In general, most CD-ROM software would have to be called "not ready for prime time"; it's little wonder that the medium has languished. The specifics of accessing across the network will be explained for each individual CD-ROM below. As noted earlier, we were successful in accessing across the network all 8 out of 8 randomly selected CD-ROMs. Our joy at this is somewhat tempered by the realization that achieving the full potential of the CD-ROM medium involves audio as well as video--and at this point network access requires giving up the audio. For even if you somehow manage to make the audio work while viewing the CD-ROM from a workstation--for | | | | | |-2 | | | - 3 - | | example by running remote access software on the LAN so that the CD- ROM access software would really be running on the server where both MSCDEX and the device driver for the CD-ROM drive are installed--the speakers are cabled to the CD-ROM player located at the server; so how are you going to hear the audio at your workstation? Actually, there may be a solution: Artisoft tech support says that the "LANtastic Voice Adapter can easily be used to access CD-ROM sound across the network. That's one of the things that it is designed to do. Even on a slow network, with a slow CD-ROM drive, the fact that the sound board runs in the background makes it pretty easy for an application program to keep the sound going continuously. All it would take to write a CD-ROM application with network sound would be appropriate driver software." Ah, there's always a catch, isn't there! (And, as luck would have it, the 9th CD-ROM--a real application selected by the customer--turned out to be impossible to access across the network. So we struck out with the only CD-ROM that really mattered.) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 4 - | | n Beginning of Sidebar A Mini-Review of the Pioneer DRM-600 CD-ROM Mini-Changer Unless you buy a CD-ROM drive for some single dedicated application, it seems likely that you'll have several CD-ROMs that you'll want to access with some regularity. Remember how much of a nuisance it was to swap floppy disks before you got your hard disk? It's the same, if not worse, with CD-ROMs. So the idea of a 'juke box' for CD-ROMs has a great deal of merit. The Pioneer DRM-600 CD-ROM Mini-Changer uses a 1" high cassette that can hold six CD-ROMs, each in a swing-out carrier. In order to access a particular CD-ROM, the mechanism swings out the CD-ROM in its carrier and positions it to be rotated and accessed as in any other CD-ROM drive. It takes a total of about 4 seconds for the mechanism to put a CD-ROM back into the cassette and retrieve a different CD-ROM. Typically each of the six cubby- holes would have its own drive letter. Some of the information is cached, so that you can, for example, typically do a 'VOL d:' or 'DIR d:' without requiring the mechanism to retrieve the specified CD-ROM (once it has been accessed). I feel the the Pioneer Mini-Changer, at about $1395 including the Future Domain TM-850 SCSI Adapter, is an attractive alternative to a single or multiple CD-ROM drives, both for the individual user and for light network use. The convenience for the single user is obvious. And on a typical network, where the CD-ROM drive is likely to be in use only a small percentage of the time, thrashing due to alternating accesses to different platters is not likely to occur; by the time usage increases to the point where thrashing becomes a problem--if that point is ever reached-- the Mini-Changer will have easily paid for itself as a viable substitute for several individual drives that would have totaled much more in cost. The Pioneer Mini-Changer comes with Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions (MSCDEX) version 2.1 and has audio outputs for both headphones and for use with any hi-fi amplifier. A pair of miniature Sony speakers (e.g., Model SRS-55), with built-in amplifiers, costs about $125 with the optional AC adapter and is used with the headphone jack. The Mini-Changer can also play Compact Discs and comes with software that makes the Mini-Changer play a CD in the background while you run your normal applications. A CD jukebox program is also included. The main installation caveat is that the '/E' (expanded memory) option should not be used on both the device driver and the Microsoft CD- ROM Extensions; typically you'll want to use '/E' on MSCDEX in order to minimize the amount of base memory used. Performance of the Pioneer Mini-Changer was on a par with most CD-ROM drives. The average access time of about 500ms is squarely in the middle: There are drives with an average access time of about 350ms at one extreme and the NEC portable CD-ROM | | | | | |-2 | | | - 5 - | | drive with an access time of 1500ms at the opposite extreme. CD- ROM drives have a theoretical maximum tranfer rate of about 150 Kbytes/sec, with the actual transfer rate generally dependent on the firmware that's part of the drive electronics. The actual throughput of the Pioneer is closer to 50 Kbytes/sec, suggesting that because the firmware cannot process the data fast enough, it may be taking three revolutions to process what potentially could have been handled in one revolution. As with hard disks, the effective continuous transfer rate is usually more important than the average access time. You'll find that the performance of the Pioneer with text is quite adequate while the display of graphic material is slower than you would like. For example, with the 'Birds of America' CD-ROM, it takes about 7 seconds to display each picture: The top 1/8th of the picture is displayed, then there is a pause of about a second, then the next 1/8th appears, and so forth. Some CD-ROM drives reportedly display these graphic images about three times faster--which may or may not be important to you. (Independent testing between different CD-ROM drives and different SCSI host adapters convinces us that the bottleneck is with the Pioneer drive, not the SCSI host adapter.) Access across the network was quite good--about 85% of the standalone speed. You'll want to get version 1.03 of the device driver so that the audio portion of CD-ROMs such as 'Birds of America' will operate properly. (Seacliff includes that version automatically; otherwise you'll need to contact Richard Millett of Pioneer's tech support department at 408-988-1702 since the drives typically come with version 1.00.) Summary: The Pioneer DRM-600 CD-ROM MiniChanger is recommended both for individual users and for light network use, especially if most of the CD-ROMs will involve text rather than graphic images. End of Sidebar | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 6 - | | n GRIPS'89: Images from space missions & satellite photography. Meridian Data, Inc. 408-438-3100 5615 Scotts Valley Drive, Scotts Valley CA 95066 Cost: $9 S&H. Includes two 'slide show' overviews: TOUR_VGA and VGADEMO, the latter being the more interesting, in part because the images take 'only' about 10 seconds to be displayed vs. several times that long for many of the 'Tour' images. The IMDISP (IMage DISPlay) program can be used to display any '.IMG' file on the CD-ROM. Requirements: Does not require MSCDEX on the workstations. However, the two 'slide show' overviews, unless modified, require that the workstation reference the CD-ROM as drive L. There are two solutions: Method 1: Use the DOS ASSIGN command to associate L: with the local drive letter that refers to the (local or network) CD-ROM drive containing the GRIPS'89 CD-ROM. Here's a very rough draft of a batch file implementing the ASSIGN approach, just to illustrate the general idea: { SET CDROM=d :: Specify the actual LOCAL drive-letter-only that refers :: to the CD-ROM drive containing the GRIPS'89 CD-ROM; :: in the case of a workstation, the local drive letter :: must have been redirected to whatever network resource :: refers to the CD-ROM drive. SET IMDISP=VGA :: Required to specify the type of video card. ASSIGN L=%cdrom% :: The GRIPS CD-ROM demo software won't work properly :: unless the CD-ROM is drive L--the ASSIGN circumvents :: this requirement. %cdrom%: CD %cdrom%:\DOS\PDS\IMDISP IMDISP VGADEMO.CMD cd \ %normal_drv% ASSIGN :: Cancels all drive assignments. } This method does work, but has the following complications: a) The ASSIGN will fail if L is not a valid drive letter. (If it's not, we can make it valid by substituting L: to some arbitrary directory, but this gets messy.) b) ASSIGN sets an errorlevel of 26 when it operates without error and sets an errorlevel above 30 when it fails. c) Errorlevels set by ASSIGN are unreliable under | | | | | |-2 | | | - 7 - | | DESQview. d) ASSIGN seems unstable under DESQview, inducing occasional spontaneous reboots. e) Even if all this worked perfectly, under DESQview the original definition of L: would be unavailable while the GRIPS'89 CD-ROM was being used in a DV window. As a result of these complications, a 'final' version of the file shown above would grow from 17 lines to over 100 lines. Method 2: The references to drive L are confined to VGA_TOUR.CMD and VGADEMO.CMD, two small command files used in conjunction with the IMDISP (IMage DISPlay) program. The two '.CMD' files can be permanently placed on the hard disk in a \GRIPS89 directory; then the 'L:' references in the '.CMD' files can be changed to whatever drive is appropriate. The related batch files then have to be modified to refer to the '.CMD' files in their new location on the hard disk. This approach avoids using L: entirely and eliminates any need to use ASSIGN. The only (relatively minor) disadvantage of Method 2 is that the '.CMD' files will have to be customized for each workstation that uses a different local drive letter to refer to the applicable CD-ROM drive--and will have to be customized again whenever the local drive letter changes. Seacliff batch files with '?' support: IMDISP, VGADEMO, TOUR_VGA | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 8 - | | n Dick's Planes: Data and images of military aircraft. Quanta Press, Inc. 612-641-0714 2239 Carter Avenue, St. Paul MN 55108 Cost: $250 It's conceivable that the user interface seems intuitive to its author, but I doubt it. The '.PCX' images vary greatly in type and quality, ranging from 'line drawings' to 'fuzzy photographs'; documentation says nothing about resolutions or number of colors-- I'd guess possibly 320x200x256 colors for the 'fuzzy photographs'. Requirements: Does not require MSCDEX on the workstations. INSTALL program creates a '\MB' directory on a hard disk--can be either a local hard disk or a hard disk on a remote server. Uses about 350 KB of hard disk space. The installation software erroneously suggests a directory 'd:\MB' as the CD-ROM directory-- must instead be 'd:\DICKS' where 'd' is the local drive letter that is used to refer to the CD-ROM drive containing the Dick's CD-ROM. Seacliff batch files with '?' support: MBRT | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 9 - | | n CD Guide Optical Edition: Information on 40,000 audio CDs. Wayne Green Enterprises, Inc. 603-525-4201 Forest Road, Hancock NH 03440 Cost: NA Provided you're willing to give up the audio--a sacrifice that's typically required anyway whenever you access a CD-ROM across the network--this CD-ROM works reasonably well once you get it working at all. The user interface is easy to use. But see caveats below. Requirements: Does not require MSCDEX on the workstations provided you specify that the drive CANNOT produce music--even though it can. (Due to complications described below, I was unable to test whether or not MXSUB would circumvent the MSCDEX requirement that rises when you specify that the drive can produce music.) So this CD-ROM does in fact work across the network, notwithstanding the many difficulties that were encountered even when working with the computer that had the CD-ROM attached: The SETUP program lists only a very limited number of specific CD-ROM drives--you have to call Wayne Green Enterprises for other drives and their only fix is for you to try the various incorrect answers and hope to find one that works; SETUP tends to bomb out, especially when it is trying to modify your CONFIG.SYS, but typically that's after the crucial batch file has been created by SETUP. We tried installing the Pioneer Mini-Changer as a Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi and three varieties of Phillips drives; in each case the installation procedure seemed to work normally, but the access program always bombed out with the message "Proc CDTRACKS Line 0, unidentified identifier ETRACK2". Thus we were never able to get the audio to work with the Pioneer Mini-Changer. So if you have a drive that isn't listed, you may have to say that it can't produce music--that bypasses the question regarding the brand of drive and circumvents some error messages in the CDGUIDE access software. If you have a monochrome VGA, you have to specify CGA-- otherwise you'll get a black screen instead of the main menu; this is really inexcusable. 458K of free memory is not enough to keep the CDGUIDE software from bombing out and dumping you back at the DOS prompt; the author of CDGUIDE says that around 480K of free memory is required. This is one of the thankfully few CD-ROMs that doesn't have a volume label--another inexcusable oversight. David Torre, the author of the CDGUIDE software, asserts that they have to know the brand of drive in order to be able to play music; yet CD-ROMs such as 'Birds of America' also play music without knowing what type of CD-ROM drive you are using. Seacliff batch files with '?' support: CDGUIDE | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 10 - | | n Birds of America: Text and images from Audubon 1840-44 reference; 320x200x256 colors with standard 256K VGA; 640x480x256 colors with supported 512K super VGA cards. CMC ReSearch, Inc. 800-262-7668 7150 SW Hampton, Suite 120, Portland OR 97223 Cost: $99 Finally a reasonably easy interface! Unfortunately the image quality is less than satisfactory on a standard 256K VGA (supposedly 320x200x256 colors, but clearly not optimized for that mode). Provides 640x480x256 colors with supported 512K Super-VGA cards, but it took five versions of the DiscPass software before I was able to accomplish this with my 512K Video-7 VRAM VGA which is one of the supported cards. Of the first three versions of the DiscPass software that we tried (1.1, 1.11 and 1.12B), each version seemed to get worse: For example, 1.11 worked fine with an Oak Technology chip set, but not with a Video-7 chip set; version 1.12b wouldn't work with either one, incorrectly interpreting both as Tseng Labs chip sets; the new but undocumented (and "Unix-like") command-line options to override the auto-detection of the chip set also didn't solve the problem-- specifying '-VSTDVGA' just didn't work in 1.12b, the first version where it's supposed to work. Often the new VGATEST (whose command-line options are undocumented) will succeed but the identical parameters will then fail with the DiscPass software itself which is inexplicably unable to find the data that VGATEST just read and displayed with no problem. The built-in help screen in DISCPASS was a bad joke: You first had to somehow guess that the command line option to display it was '-?' and then it disappeared so fast that it took about a dozen tries to pause the machine fast enough to read it--and even then it didn't list the supported chip-set parameters. These help screen problems were corrected in the fifth and final version that we tried, version 1.13a: Now both '?' and '-?' are accepted, the help screen no longer immediately disappears, and the help information shows how to get a list of all the supported card types. We could still quibble about the way the help information is presented, but version 1.13a certainly represents a big improvement. (Unfortunately the help screen fixes have not yet been incorporated into the VGATEST program.) The DiscPass software is still a memory hog with very poor manners: Not only does it require about 500K of free memory, but it malfunctions in a variety of ways when it runs out of memory, rather than giving a clear cut 'out of memory' message. For example, the vendor's tech support says the "Can't find database" message that plagued us can be due to insufficient memory--as well as too small a number of FILES in CONFIG.SYS. The latest version of the CD-ROM now includes a BIRDDEMO program that puts on a slide show. As seems to be CMC's pattern, it comes with not a word of documentation. If there's some way to speed up the show--to make it proceed to the next slide--it's a well-kept secret. When run from a workstation accessing the CD-ROM drive on a remote server, the BIRDDEMO program hung at the first image--probably when the program attempted to make the birdcall for that image; it may well be impossible for the birdcall to have functioned since the | | | | | |-2 | | | - 11 - | | DiscPass software was running on a different machine than MSCDEX and the device driver for the CD-ROM drive; but we might have hoped for the demo not to hang the system. The only good thing we can say about BIRDDEMO is that the ESC key will get you out of it--provided the system hasn't already hung! Although you can supposedly use DiscPass with a monochrome VGA display (though you certainly won't like the pictures due to the program's poor use of the 320x200x256 color mode), with the first four versions of the DiscPass software is was usually impossible to see what you were pointing at; thankfully this was fixed in the fifth and last version, 1.13a dated 9-12-90. (Unfortunately the monochrome VGA fix has not yet been made in the BIRDDEMO program.) Version 1.13a was the only version that correctly recognized my Video-7 VRAM VGA (512K)--and it worked in 640x480x256 colors even with switch 8 turned on (disables VGA extensions) provided that I executed the command 'V7VGA PURE:OFF' to enable the VGA extensions; with 'V7VGA PURE:ON', I was able to use the '-vstdvga' switch to view in 320x200x256 colors. Once you've seen the image quality in 640x480x256 colors--available on supported 512K Super-VGA cards-- you won't be satisfied with the 320x200x256 colors that standard 256K VGA cards provide. Although version 1.13a is an improvement on balance, it also introduced some new bugs: In the command-line drive specification, '-DR' was acceptable in 1.12b to specify drive R, but 1.13a is case sensitive and will only accept '-dR' or '-dr'. Likewise parameters such as '-vall' are only accepted in lower case. Hopefully CMC's Unix-oriented programmer will see the light and accept both '-' and '/' as delimiters and allow upper as well as lower case. And 1.13a still misinterprets the Oak chip set as the Tseng chip set, although it manages to work anyway. The Tseng chip set support is only for the Tseng 3000 series--it doesn't work for the increasingly popular Tseng 4000 series chip set that has gotten rave reviews re the Diamond Computer SpeedStar VGA and is also used in the Orchid ProDesigner II. We also experienced extensive problems with the audio portion of the Birds of America CD-ROM--but this turns out not to have been the fault of the CD-ROM. We knew the audio was there because we could play it as a CD using the software that comes with the Pioneer Mini- Changer. But for a long time we never managed to get any audio when using the DiscPass software: The audio light on the CD-ROM drive would come on, but the lights on the Sony SRS-55 speakers would never come on. Similar total failure when using headphones. The solution to the audio problem was in the device driver for the Pioneer Mini-Changer: When we downloaded version 1.03 and installed it in place of version 1.00 that had been shipped with the drive, suddenly the audio worked the way it was supposed to. Although the DiscPass software 1.13a is not quite ready for prime time, we do see some hope that it will be quite usable in the near future. We certainly agree with programmer Courtney Meissen's observation that "it is quite a task to support 13 different video card chipsets". This same software is also used with CMC's other CD-ROMs. Requirements: Requires MSCDEX on each workstation, but MXSUB tricks it into working (despite unsupported calls 01 and 0C). The SETUP program creates a \DISCPASS directory on the hard disk of | | | | | |-2 | | | - 12 - | | your choice; uses only about 135K of hard disk space. Be sure to run SETUP from the supplied diskette, not from the CD-ROM: The CD-ROM contains DiscPassage version 1.1 (6-12-90), the diskette contains version 1.11 (6-21-90), and later versions 1.12B (7-25- 90), 1.13 (9-6-90) and 1.13a (9-12-90) are available upon request. By default the DiscPassage (DP.EXE) retrieval software assumes that the desired CD-ROM is accessible via your first CD-ROM drive letter, but this assumption can be overridden by putting the desired drive letter on the DP command line--the syntax changed starting with version 1.12B from a simple 'd' to '-dd' where the second 'd' is the drive letter. The drive letter specified explicitly or by default must correspond to a CD-ROM drive that contains a CD-ROM that uses DiscPassage--otherwise you'll be returned to the DOS prompt. Once inside the program, you can change the CD-ROM drive letter to other letters that correspond to drives that contain other DiscPassage CD-ROMs. Seacliff batch files with '?' support: BIRDS, DP | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 13 - | | n Sherlock Holmes: Text of all Sherlock Holmes stories; also Linoleum Block Prints but only on supported super VGA cards with 512K of memory; the prints cannot be displayed on a standard 256K VGA. CMD ReSearch, Inc. 800-262-7668 7150 SW Hampton, Suite 120, Portland OR 97223 Cost: $99 Uses the same DiscPassage retrieval software as Birds of America and Shakespeare. Unfortunate that the prints can't be displayed on a standard VGA. See commentary in 'Birds of American' discussion. Requirements: Same as 'Birds of America'. However, unlike 'Birds of America' and 'Shakespeare', the 'Sherlock Holmes' CD- ROM is missing its volume label. Seacliff batch files with '?' support: SHERLOCK, DP | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 14 - | | n Shakespeare: Complete works in both American & Queen's English. No graphic images other than two portraits. CMD ReSearch, Inc. 800-262-7668 7150 SW Hampton, Suite 120, Portland OR 97223 Cost: $99 Uses the same DiscPassage retrieval software as Birds of America and Sherlock Holmes. See commentary in 'Birds of American' discussion. Requirements: Same as 'Birds of America'. Seacliff batch files with '?' support: WILLIAM, DP | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 15 - | | n Programmer's ROM: Utility source code in a variety of programming languages. Quanta Press, Inc. 612-641-0714 2550 University Avenue West, Suite 245U, St. Paul MN 55114 Cost: $99 Provides Vernon D. Buerg's LIST Version 6.3a (8-13-88) as a way of viewing the catalog '.CAT' file that is included in each of the 13 directories. Most files are '.ZIP'; but LIST is unable to browse the contents of a '.ZIP' file. So basically all you can do is select potentially interesting files based on the catalog listing, then copy the files to your hard disk and unZIP them there. So there really isn't any retrieval software in the usual sense. Requirements: MSCDEX is not required on workstations. To make use of a substantial percentage of this CD-ROM you would need a considerable amount of free disk space: The contents of this CD- ROM would probably unZIP to over a gigabyte of source code! Seacliff batch files with '?' support: none required | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 16 - | | n Phethean's Public Domain Library #1 for IBM & Compatibles Peter J. Phethean, Ltd. 213-694-2112 1640 E. Brookdale Ave., La Habra CA 90631 Cost: $49 Includes an assortment of public domain and shareware programs, plus some slide show demos of various CD-ROMs. No retrieval software is provided or required--just use standard hard disk utilities. Requirements: MSCDEX is not required on workstations. Seacliff batch files with '?' support: none required | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 17 - | | n Search Master Tax Library: Text of the internal revenue code. Matthew Bender & Company, Inc. 518-487-3000 1275 Broadway, Albany NY 12204 Cost: As they say about yachts ... Comes with access software called MB (Matthew Bender's Search Master). A potentially useful package for accountants and tax attorneys, but see major caveats below. Requirements: Matthew Bender's Search Master software gives new meaning to the term 'memory hog': it requires about 530K of available memory and can't make use of extended or expanded memory. Since the Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions (MSCDEX) takes a minimum of 24K even when expanded memory is available, that means we need 554K available--after installing the device driver for the CD-ROM drive itself. But often it's not possible to load that device driver high. The net result is that, on the face of it, it seems impossible to run this software under DESQview--there could never be enough memory available on an EGA or VGA system. Even a very clean system would have to be stripped down further to run this pig. By default the MB software expects to find the CD-ROM in the first CD-ROM drive. There is nothing in the documentation to indicate how this can be circumvented, so a call to tech support is required--where you will wait on hold interminably, being invited every thirty seconds or so to leave voice mail which may someday be returned. At least it's an 800 number. Turns out that the MB program can take two command-line arguments: a unit number (where 0 means your first CD-ROM drive letter, 1 means the next, and so forth) and the device driver name. However, even with the CD-ROM in the first CD-ROM drive, the software kept insisting that no valid CD-ROM was present; it then rudely kicked out the CD-ROM cartridge (wouldn't that be lovely on a network?); we then pushed the cartridge back in and suddenly the software was happy. And once in a while it didn't complain to begin with. Don't ask us why. Two CD-ROMs were included in the particular package examined: the '1989 Tax Annual, Release 8' and the 'Tax Library, Release 15'. Initially we used version 1.30 of the MB software to access Release 8. Later we found version 1.52 of the MB software in the back of the manual; when we attempted to use version 1.52, it wanted a 20-character access code. But the only access code provided was for the Release 15 CD-ROM. Tech support promises to eventually provide a second 20-character access code so we can use the latest software with both CD-ROMs. We can hardly wait. When entering search criteria, even a one-finger hunt-and-peck typist could outrun the program--even on a 386-33 with cache! You have to check the screen after each individual keystroke to make sure it really registered. Fortunately, this was correctable: Under ID Options, change 'Refresh technique' from 'STANDARD' to 'RETRAC2'; the documentation gives no information on what that does, but it does solve the problem. (However, the problem later resurfaced under DESQview.) The CD- ROM does have a volume label--'ICC_CDROM'--but I have no idea why that particular label was chosen; and it certainly doesn't seem like a good idea to use the same volume label on both the 1989 | | | | | |-2 | | | - 18 - | | ANNUAL CD-ROM (Release 8) and the latest CD-ROM for the current year (Release 15). Unlike most CD-ROMs that have files in a conventional directory structure, this CD-ROM has a single 404 megabyte file. We note in passing that a network version of this software is planned--now that should really be an interesting study in ramcram! With the current version access from a network workstation seems quite impossible: MB bombs out with the message "open cdrom device 'MSCD000' unit 0 ...failed", clearly indicating that it is trying to talk directly to the non-existent device driver instead of operating through the drive letter provided by the Microsoft CD-ROM extensions. (The only hope of accessing this CD-ROM from a network workstation would be to use remote network access software such as PC Anywhere/LAN: If you could get enough available memory on the server or dedicated workstation, you could then run the program on that server or workstation remotely from your workstation. But of course no one else on the network could access the CD-ROM at the same time--not exactly what we usually mean by network access!) The direct access to the device driver made us suspicious: Does MB use the Microsoft CD-ROM extensions at all? The documentation and tech support certainly say that the Microsoft CD-ROM extensions are required, but MB upon startup does NOT check that MSCDEX is installed; and with both version 1.30 and 1.52 we were able to do a successful search of the database without MSCDEX installed. So as far as we can determine MB makes little if any use of the Microsoft CD-ROM extensions; MB seems to be an old-school program that works by talking directly to the device driver. Given that crucial piece of information, it appeared just barely possible that the program might run under DESQview: We could get about 530K of available memory which should be enough since we now knew that it wasn't necessary to install the Microsoft CD-ROM extensions. Initially we got nothing but a black screen under DESQview, yet the program was in fact running and would respond to 'blind' keyboard commands. Eventually we modifed DESQview's setup to not require simultaneous text and graphics; that made the MB graphics-based logo screen appear, but the text-based guts of the program still showed up as a black screen. We tried reconfiguring MB for 'monochrome EGA' instead of 'color EGA'; we were actually using monochrome VGA, but the program--being several years behind the times--has no VGA settings; that didn't work; neither did 'monochrome CGA' nor 'color CGA' nor just plain 'monochrome'; in each case we got the graphics logo screen but not the text. We were obviously very close to having MB work under DESQview, but we just hadn't yet discovered the secret. The secret turned out to be turning off virtualization in the DESQview '.PIF' (Program Information File). We were then able to see both the graphic logo and the text; and we were able to perform a search (in the foreground) under DESQview. Unfortunately, when we popped up the DESQview menu, the screen image of the MB program broke up and when we switched back to the MB program we once again had a black screen. Close but no cigar. We then went back into the DESQview setup and requested simultaneous text and graphics; this setting, combined with virtualization turned off, occasionally works: sometimes we can pop up the DESQview main menu without affecting the appearance of the MB program; but other times the image breaks up and we have | | | | | |-2 | | | - 19 - | | nothing but a blank screen when we switch back to the MB program. That's where things stand as we near publication deadline. Since even the simple search suggested by the tutorial takes about 5 minutes, it really would be very beneficial for the program to be able to run in the background under DESQview--but we just don't know if that's going to be possible. (Additional notes: Installing DVANSI helped a bit, but system often hung on the DESQview main menu; also typing '/' often produced '?'--fortunately the 101-keyboard has an alternate '/' key that worked; typing of search criteria intolerably slow. None of the retrace options solve the problem within DESQview. The apparent hang on the DESQview main menu seems in part to be a conflict between MB and the Dvorak keyboard emulator SSTRANS which seems to keep slipping back into Dvorak mode; sometimes pressing ALT LSHFT ESC successfully exits from Dvorak mode and eliminates the apparent hang at the DESQview main menu; unfortunately, other times the hang is real and the only way out is to reboot. The image usually breaks up when popping up the DESQview main menu; returning to the application works about half the time; when it doesn't work--producing a blank screen--pressing ENTER seems to restore the image. Prospects for smooth operation seem bleak.) We eventually found that the image break up and the hanging was due to a conflict between the Matthew Bender software and the Dvorak device driver SSTRANS--which had never before conflicted with anything. Removing the Dvorak device driver made it possible to run MB under DESQview, although the lost keystroke problem and the "'?' instead of '/'" problems remained. We'd have to characterize the Matthew Bender Search Master package as one of the most ill-behaved programs on the market. In its present condition, the Matthew Bender Search Master package has rather limited practicality--you have to need its facilities rather badly to be willing to put up with the problems. The only hope for this package lies in the fact that a network version is planned; that will have to entail a major rewrite of the software to eliminate any direct access to the device driver; in general, the changes required to permit network access will inevitably make the program better behaved; but we doubt that the network version will be out on time (the end of 1990). We recommend that the programmer responsible for this abomination bone up on topics such as 'overlay', 'expanded memory', 'Video Graphics Array' and 'the advantages of using industry-standard interfaces'. .................................. About the author: Robert Brown is best known as the originator of the Landmark CPU Speed Test. His company, which recently changed its name to Seacliff, also sells virtually all microcomputer- related hardware & software products--including LANtastic networks and the CD-ROM drives and media discussed in this article. | | | | | |-2 | | | - 20 - | | n SEACLIFF BATCH FILES FOR USE WITH SPECIFIC CD-ROMS { GRIPS'89: Photographic images from satellites & space missions. Meridian Data, Inc. 408-438-3100 5615 Scotts Valley Drive, Scotts Valley CA 95066 VGADEMO...10 minute slide show; most images appear in about 15 seconds. TOUR_VGA..12 minute slide show--some images take nearly 60 seconds. IMDISP....IMage DISPlay software to display any '.IMG'; use 'IMDISP ?'. } { Dick's Planes: Information and images about military aircraft. Quanta Press, Inc. 612-641-0714 2239 Carter Avenue, St. Paul MN 55108 MBRT......MediaBase retrieval software; manual required; use 'MBRT ?'. } { CD Guide Optical Edition: Information on 40,000 audio CDs. Wayne Green Enterprises, Inc. 603-525-4201 Forest Road, Hancock NH 03440 CDGUIDE...retrieval software. } { Birds of America: Text and images from Audabon reference. CMD ReSearch, Inc. 7150 SW Hampton, Suite 120, Portland OR 97223 800-262-7668 DP........DiscPassage retrieval software; use 'DP ?'. BIRDS.....Same except for help screen and default CD-ROM drive. } { Shakespeare: Complete works in both American and Queen's English. CMD ReSearch, Inc. 7150 SW Hampton, Suite 120, Portland OR 97223 800-262-7668 DP........DiscPassage retrieval software; use 'DP ?'. WILLIAM...Same except for help screen and default CD-ROM drive. } { Sherlock Holmes: Complete stores by Arther Conan Doyle. CMD ReSearch, Inc. 7150 SW Hampton, Suite 120, Portland OR 97223 800-262-7668 DP........DiscPassage retrieval software; use 'DP ?'. SHERLOCK..Same except for help screen and default CD-ROM drive. } | | | | | | |-2 | | | - 21 - | | { Programmer's ROM: Utility source code in a variety of languages. Quanta Press, Inc. 612-641-0714 2550 University Avenue West, Suite 245U, St. Paul MN 55114 No batch files required--utilities such as XTREE or Magellan would be better suited for this CD-ROM than the supplied LIST utility. } { Phethean's Public Domain Library #1 for IBM & Compatibles Peter J. Phethean, Ltd. 213-694-2112 1640 E. Brookdale Ave., La Habra CA 90631 No batch files required--use any standard hard disk utility. } | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-