Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!mrd@sun.mcs.clarkson.EDU
From: mrd@sun.mcs.clarkson.EDU (Michael R. DeCorte)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: CD-ROM speed
Message-ID: <11204@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: 11 Jan 88 10:43:17 GMT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 24


   >>CD ROM roots would be bad because CD ROM's are blindingly slow.
   >Currently true.  But don't take the current state-of-the-art as an intrinsic
   >limit.  They'll get faster.

   According to "CD-ROM: The New Papyrus" by Microsoft Press, faster data

The reason CD-ROMS are so horribly slow has more to do with the seek
times.  In designing the format of CD-ROMS it was felt (I believe by
Sony) that the disks should be similar to the audio disks.  The audio
disks do not have tracks exactly but instead have one very big spiral
track.  This is great for audio, no breaks in the sound when you have
to go to the next track, but for computers this stinks; where does
track 5 start - about there someplace, +/- a track.  Last I heard seek
times were something like 1/2 a second.  Now this could be wrong as I
haven't been keeping up for the past 2 years but I don't think they
have changed the format.


Michael DeCorte
mrd@clutx.clarkson.edu
mrd@clutx.bitnet

These opinions do not necessarily represent Clarkson U.