Optical Disk add-on

[Dave Olson]

I can provide the negative information that the sony C501 optical disk
will NOT work with it's current firmware on ANY of the 4D machines with
any software release.  It turns out that it will only work correctly if
the driver does not support disconnect / reselect.

The c501 does appear to work in a non-disconnect environment, but it's
performance is VERY poor.  You can get about 120K on writes, and about
210K sec on reads.

It's also a very expensive drive...

Unless you absolutely need large capacity removable media for file
systems, it looks like optical write many drives are a loss.  For
archival purposes, it looks like DAT's are much more cost effective,
while still having *relatively* fast random access.  As far as capacity
goes, you only get about 330Mb per side on the optical anyway, and it's
more expensive than 760Mb SCSI drives.
	Dave Olson

It's important to keep an open mind, but not so open
that your brains fall out. -- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.