Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!pauling!klong
From: klong@pauling.bcm.tmc.edu (Kevin Long)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Appletalk CD-ROM access
Message-ID: <120@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
Date: 9 Jan 90 20:47:46 GMT
References: <1990Jan2.151626.7868@aucs.uucp> <43682@improper.coherent.com>
Sender: usenet@bcm.tmc.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
Lines: 29

In article <43682@improper.coherent.com> dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes:
>In article <1990Jan2.151626.7868@aucs.uucp> paul@aucs.UUCP (Paul Steele) writes:
>> The boss wants to a CD-ROM service on our Appletalk network...
>
>Attach a CD-ROM player to one Mac ...
>Install copies of TOPS...
>Configure the "server" Mac so that the CD-ROM is mounted at boot time,
>and is then published as a read-only volume by TOPS.

I think this would be very difficult to do.  Shutting down or restarting a mac 
ejects the disk from the Apple CD SC player.  On startup, since TOPS gets installed 
and looks for its disks before the Finder looks to see what's in the CD drive,
then even if you were there to push the CD back into the drive immediately,
TOPS can't auto-publish a CD volume automatically on startup.  I tried this
once, and I recall this being the outcome.  Too bad, huh?

And like the previous poster said, although you can publish a CD with TOPS 
for read-only access (with TOPS 3.0), it's a *real* drain on the server 
machine's resources.  You effectively do dedicate your Mac to that job.

I wonder if a better solution is to get a Sun CD drive, and publish it with TOPS/Sun. 

Something I have not investigated is TOPS/DOS-publishing CDs from the Silver Platter
CD jukebox.  Their H/W works with a 3-com network, as I recall, and I have
no idea if it will work with TOPS.

	Kevin Long
	Baylor College of Medicine
	klong@bcm.tcm.edu