Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewse!cwpjr
From: cwpjr@cbnewse.att.com (clyde.w.jr.phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Is CDTV CD ROM drive compatible?
Summary: But, BUT! BUT!!!
Message-ID: <1990Dec11.160910.17300@cbnewse.att.com>
Date: 11 Dec 90 16:09:10 GMT
References: <90344.151536IO00844@MAINE.BITNET> <90345.021910R38@psuvm.psu.edu> <1990Dec11.095100.26677@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 50

In article <1990Dec11.095100.26677@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>, kdarling@hobbes.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) writes:
> > CDTV is compatible with CDROMs that are of the ISO-9660 standard
> > format.  Look for that designation on the label.
> 
> That ISO standard is for the directory layout only.  Unfortunately there
> is no standard yet for the actual data contained in the files.
> 
> CDROM-XA is supposed to take care of that, but it seems a long way away.
> 
> In the meantime, you virtually always have to have the specific program
> (the data retrieval engine) ported to your machine, in order to be able
> to access the data.  There are a few discs with available data specs,
> but they're the rare case indeed, it seems.  Most cdrom makers keep
> their data encoding a secret.
>

The first statement "directory layout only" would lead me to beleive
the "data retreival engine" (Device Driver) that comes with the
ISO CDROM Drive I bought for my (whatever) system can read any ISO disk
and tell me the file names on the CDROM.

Then you say ( ne pas intention du flambe ) these device drivers
have to be unique to "access the data"...
 
The simple answer is that all what I infer is correct but that the
CDROM makers are defeating the STD by "encoding" the files. (Prog&Data)

If the standard drive came with a device driver that could tell
me file names I assume I'd see:
for MS-DOS:
*.exe , *.com , *.bat , *.dat , *.GIF
for AMI
*.iff , *.anim , etc

And assuming I'm an ami user I could read in a PC *.GIF
file and send it to an amy file and run a gif2iff utility.

Likewise for MAC targeted CDROMS. Even if the CDROM is targeted
towards a platform I should be able to get at the data.

I see however that since we dont have "programs" that normally
deal with CD volumes of data that a particular CDROM application
may encode data, but all of them?

I guess that I'd expect the standards of the target platform
to be the standards for the data in the files on the CDROM.

Is this wrong headed?

--Clyde