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From: lauren@RAND-UNIX.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: CD speeds
Message-ID: <37@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 03:46:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.37
Posted: Sat Jul 20 03:46:44 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jul-85 03:46:45 EDT
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
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If you keep all your desired data in a narrower band, you can of course
keep the seek time farther down.  Transfer rate from the discs isn't
terribly impressive, however.  One important point to keep in mind
is that current relatively slow CD players aren't designed for 
extremely high duty cycles.  If you design players that will stand
up better and work faster, the price will be somewhat higher, and
in fact will start to intersect (if they haven't already) with
magnetic disk media of similar storage capacity (when looking
at a 10 Mbyte band on a CD, for example).  At that point, there's little
point to spending the money on the CD player instead of the magnetic
media, since you're going to need the magnetic disk also in any case.
That is, unless the mass archival capabilities of the CD are of particular
use in your application.

CD's are really optimal for mass data that needs to be read occasionally
in a comparatively non-rigorous fashion (from a time and duty-cycle
standpoint).  Anything else is starting to push the technology in 
directions that become decreasingly cost effective when compared
with magnetic media, particularly given the still rapidly falling
costs of magnetic media.

--Lauren--