Optical Disk add-on

[Mark Bradley]

In article <520 at chem.ucsd.EDU>, tps at chem.ucsd.edu (Tom Stockfisch) writes:
> Has anyone had experience adding a readable/writeable optical disk to any of
> the 4D series?  How is reliability?
> -- 
> 
> || Tom Stockfisch, UCSD Chemistry	tps at chem.ucsd.edu

I believe you are asking about erasable optical drives on the 4D, as opposed
to WORM, which are readable and writable too. (Erasable = Rewritable = MO
(a.k.a. Magneto-Optical))  (WORM = Write Once, Read Many _times_)

The answer from SGI is "Not yet."  Probably many readers of this group have
seen advertisements from the likes of HP and DEC (and NeXT, of course) re-
garding availability of such products on workstations.  SGI is not in a pos-
ition to have the likes of Sony 'in our back pockets', so to speak, hence
we have not been privy to the earliest iterations of such products which
would have allowed us to offer the same product in an identical time frame.

We are not first in offering THIS product, but we will have a better one
when it finally is a product.

Please don't ask when we will offer this, as we don't know yet.  I have
had units on order for quite some time and continue to be told "Any day
now...".

As for WORM's, please ask your salesperson for information.  We have one
or two independent vendors that offer good products (both hardware and
software) that have been ported to our 4D systems.  Your salesperson will
be able to provide the information to you for these.

					markb

--
Mark Bradley				"Faster, faster, until the thrill of
IO Subsystems				 speed overcomes the fear of death."
Silicon Graphics Computer Systems
Mountain View, CA			     ---Hunter S. Thompson