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From: tj@kona.cs.ucla.edu (Tom Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Reviews of Non-Apple CD-ROM drives (Summary)
Message-ID: <1991Apr8.205628.28550@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 8 Apr 91 20:56:28 GMT
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In article <7188@mace.cc.purdue.edu> omalley@mace.cc.purdue.edu (John O'Malley) writes:
>My recent query for comparative reviews of non-Apple CD drives resulted in
>several responses.  Here's the info.
>
>MacUser reviewed CD-ROM drives in March 1990 ... and will again soon in
>June 1991.  Macworld reviewed them back in April 1988, but that's too old
>to be worth much.  Macworld covered single products, though, in January,
>August, and September 1990.
>
>CD Technology's Porta Drive (Toshiba mechanism) are reported to work fine,
>have easy setup, and have much faster access times than Apple.  They have
>audio outs but only a three-position volume switch for headphones.  Also,
>one person recommended using Apple's "CD Remote" DA to fix a problem with
>the Porta Drive's music interface.  Many of the people who responded have
>purchased several of this model drive.
>
>The Toshiba mechanism (XM-3201) is also available in a Toshiba-
>labeled drive, but the CD Technology version is about $100 cheaper.


We have a Toshiba XM-3201MAC drive here in the Computer Science department
hardware lab.  I have a few comments about this particular drive.

If you are using it purely for data, it's works fine.  The drive is indeed
faster than the Apple, and we have had no compatibility problems
with it whatsoever.

If you are using it for playing audio CDs, watch out.  The Toshiba driver,
does not support all of Apple's music calls.  You have to use Apple's
CD Remote desk accessory and INIT to play disks, but you can't scan
thru the disk (no fast-forward or rewind). You can jump to different
tracks, if you wish, you just can't fast-forward into the middle of 
a track.  Other driver calls do not seem to be supported as well, the
GetMusicStatus (or whatever it's called) control call consistently returns
bad information about the actual status of audio play.  When I called
Toshiba Disk Products tech support, they told me that they did not write
the Mac driver for the XM-3201, and referred all technical questions to
Optical Media International.  When I called OMI, I was told that the
driver was not written by one of their programmers, but by an outside
contract programmer.  Any questions I had would have to be forwarded by
them to the programmer.  I faxed them a list of questions 3 months ago, 
but I still haven't received a response.

All in all, I would never buy another Toshiba drive.  I don't think that
the overall hassle (and the lack of confidence I now have in the companies
Macintosh products) would offset the small performance increases and the
very slight monetary savings.

Tom
-- 
Tom Johnson             "I put this moment.............................here
tj@cs.ucla.edu           I put this moment......................here
                         I put this moment--
                                              Over here!"        (Kate)