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From: wtcx@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Tom Clodfelter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: NEC CDR355 CD-Rom -- DONT!
Message-ID: <10365@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 4 Jun 90 19:26:20 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell U., Ithaca NY
Lines: 20


I recently purchased an NEC CDR35 CD-Rom drive.  I had heard that the
drive was really slow but I was prepaired to put up with that due
to the price of the drive.  I found out through testing that this
drive is not tollerant of other SCSI devices.  It slowed down the
access to my hard disk by causing SCSI errors and disk timeouts.
With this device powered up, the speed of my systems IO was cut to 25%.
Turn the device off and everything was normal.  The addresses and 
termination of my SCSI were set up correctly.  This device selected
any time any SCSI device was used.  It would hold the bus until
it had spun up, even though it was not being accessed.  

This was a real diappointment.  I really like the idea of the portable
drive.  It was totally useless on my Mac IIcx and while it was
turned on it made my Mac totally useless as well.  Needless to say
it is on its way back to MacConnection.

A cryptic note in the NEC package seems to indicate that the device is
designed to be the sole device on the SCSI bus.  This makes it somewhat
useless on a Mac.