@BigD

Yeah, it wasnt nice what happened with CDROM drives in the beginning. MMC stands for "Multi Media Command" set and is based on the SCSI standard commands set. Some older SCSI drives (and even more old ATA drives, e.g. Mitsumi) dont obey those standards in some cases. C= missed to make a standard library for CDDA (and other features) access, so every developer was forced to use his own solution to this. Simplest one was to let the user decide which drive to use (and hope that it works).

Thats why e.g. MakeCD uses driver modules and for modern drives only one module is needed, its called SCSI3_ATAPI. Most modern drives work with this command set, so mostly its a question from when your potentially new drive is.

Its sufficient to know manufacturer and model number to determine if your actual drive uses a standard or non-standard command set.

I can tell you, why Escom used such drives... 1994 was a time when still some SCSI drives doesnt make use of the full MMC set, mostly the cheaper ones. There is the answer ;)

If you get a new drive try to get some not from before 1998. At this time most SCSI drives support MMC2/3 and should work with widely used code for CDDA replay and other special CDROM features.

@Thread

So that was a waste of £12 then wasn't it? Escom included a cheap non-MMC cd-rom drive in the A4000T so that it's not compatible with RTG/AHI/CDDA based games! Brilliant. Do I seriously have to buy a new CD-ROM in order to use this kind of software? It's not really worth the hassle if I'm honest!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Hey, keep cool... first of all it would be good to know which manufacturer/model your actual drive is. Maybe theres somebody out there who knows how to make it work nonetheless

And btw., it has nothing to do with RTG/AHI, its just a CDROM drive problem, maybe incompatibility, maybe a game code bug. Other games should (and surely would) work fine (ok, besides CDDA, that is).

Ah, forgot: Isnt there an option in Exodus, allowing for playing without CDDA? I remember vaguely...

Last edited by whose on 05-Mar-2010 at 06:22 PM.
Last edited by whose on 05-Mar-2010 at 06:21 PM.

@whose

Quote:

I see it from a programmers POV, and there it is about detecting the right drive

This is actually simpler than it should be. If the game needs the CD in the drive for music then all it has to do is get the volume! Forget about DOS devices, if it knows what volume name ii needs it just needs to locate that device and then extract the Exec device and unit.

Quote:

I made some code for this lately, but it wont work reliable on OS3.x machines using very old drives (even more if some of them are present at the same time).

Is that getting the drive to play a CD? This is a different scenario then than finding what to give to Open Device().

My first CD drive was a Panasonic or Matsushita. I had trouble trying to rip CDDA using MakeCD. Didn't like it. IIRC I found out what commands were needed to be sent to the drive and wrote some CD ripper for my use. But, special read commands shouldn't have been needed, just a simple device read should have been suffice.

But, reading CDDA is different to playing it properly within the unit.

Quote:

So it is quite easy to find the drive by software, without any hassle for the user who otherwise has to know which device and unit # the drive is attached to.

Yes, and I can see we agree on this. Where we went off is playing CD tracks. I was still talking about detecting where the drive is. Looks like you were talking about a more complicated issue.

@BigD

Quote:

On the A4000T isn't the SCSI device in the 3.1 ROMS?

Yes it is. They dropped the workbench.library and stuck it on disk as it wouldn't fit. This makes the A4000T instantly incompatible with CU cover disks!

Quote:

It doesn't list scsi.device in the list of options for Exodus Prefs though!

That's because it gives you a file requester of your DEVS: directory. It should give you a listview of your Exec devices. Just a lazy way of doing it.

Quote:

Why is this so hard?

Because the programmers are too lazy to look this information up from the CD volume which it already expects in the drive!

But, just make sure the string gadgets contain this:
Device: scsi.device
Unit: 5

No other keywords or = signs needed.

Quote:

Don't I just install OS3.9 and get on with using my Amiga?

You also have to set up the CD drives. And to do it properly with CacheCDFS detecting drives you have to Show-All on the OS3.9 CD and install it directly. The OS3.9 installer doesn't do this right.

Don't forget the OS3.9 Boingbags. Hey we should have an OS3.9 slipstream by now!

Quote:

If SCSI.device isn't present on any of my Workbench partitions how come my CD-ROM is working?

Because as you said it's in the ROM!

Also, if you try HDToolbox or Mounter it might not see the drive. Because without the fully OS3.9 patched scsi,.device it will ignore CDROM drives on the bus. But anyway try those programs.

Alternately use the CacheCDFS FindCD tool.

And set up PlayCD to see if it really can't play CDs. It should at least return an error if the drive doesn't support the commands and you don't see the green light on to indicate it's playing.

@whose

My CD-Rom is as follows:

Make: Toshiba
Model: XM-6201B
Manufacture Date: January 1998

Is this CD-Rom a MMC compliant drive and will it work with CDDA in Amiga games?

I remember now the previous owner had AsimCDFS installed and the hard drve with it installed has recently broken! Do I need to reinstall this driver software and if so where do I get it from?

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

I did a quick search on it and one entry said it is MPC-2 compliant, which is different in some respect to MMC. So most likely it isnt able to play CDDA audio if the game uses MMC commands, Im sorry It is able to extract audio data via "SCSI direct", so thats the most likely reason for the previous owner to use AsimCDFS (besides other advantages it is told to have).

I have no clue where to get AsimCDFS, maybe some guy here could help out with this?

@whose

I've found AsimCDFS v2.0 CDROM FileSystem

Would this be worth the investment?

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

Looks from this website as if I'll need version 3.9!!


Amiga Web Directory AsimCDFS 3.9 Features

It mentions my CD-ROM, Toshiba XM-6201B (32x) CD-ROM drive 1

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Yeah, I think so Well, you dont need AsimCDFS that badly, I think. Its biggest advantage is that it is able to handle CDDA tracks as files (just like OS4 CDFS does), so this way you could play audio tracks using Play16 or similar players. But there are programs (Aminet) that are able to read audio data directly via SCSI functions into a file (wav or aiff). These were made for Toshiba drives (the XM-3301? for example) and I believe they work with your drive, too.

For the game problem this wouldnt help, I think...

Maybe its time to ask for another patch for e.g. Exodus?

@whose

What sort of CD-Rom drive would I have to upgrade to to get CDDA compatibility? Are there any easily compatible drives currently available? Do AmigaKit sell any?

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Quote:

Are there any easily compatible drives currently available?

Do any people around you get rid of old PC's? All you need is to rip a CD drive out of a beige box and you should be done!

@BigD

Quote:

What sort of CD-Rom drive would I have to upgrade to to get CDDA compatibility?

Replace the word upgrade with downgrade. Most modern CD/DVD drives don't support the old method of CDDA playback used in PlayCD and some Amiga games (Genetic Species, Exodus, etc.) as this method has been deprecated. The PlayCDDA program I've written uses the newer method of reading raw CDDA data which all newer drives should support.

@salass00

I dont think he will use a SATA or absolutely latest PATA drive without audio output

@BigD:

Even some older IDE CDROM drive might do the trick. From 2002 on most IDE drives supported MMC-2/3, which fits perfectly for your purposes. If you need SCSI drives, you could try Pioneer Slot-In (32x works with audio output here!) or Yamaha CD-RW drives (but beware, latter ones arent that good quality at all ).

@salass00

Quote:

. The PlayCDDA program I've written uses the newer method of reading raw CDDA data

Are you saying that CD drives don't support proper playing commands anymore? This seems like a step back for me if you must read in the data and mix it manually. That's a bit crass compared with the drive being the CD player and outputting through the back. I noticed that play button missing on modern drives but didn't know they can't actually properly play a CD anymore. I'm sure mine does it.

@whose

Would this do the job?

Yamaha CRW 4416S

Looks like it's MMC compliant! It says it is SCSI-3. Would it need a 68pin to 50pin converter?

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

No, looks like it's a 50 Pin SCSI Drive!

And was manufactured in 1998 if that means anything?

Yamaha CRW 4416S Manual PDF

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Hehe, no, the year of manufacturing means nothing... what means more is, that MakeCD supports it with the "SCSI3_ATAPI" driver. Thats at least a good sign for MMC compliance. I really hope you have luck this time!

@Hypex

Most modern drives indeed doesnt support direct audio playback anymore. You will hardly find any SATA drives for example. Latest PATA drives have no audio part anymore, too. Missing play button doesnt say much (I have/had several drives without it) but a missing audio plug on the back will say much more.

What do you mean with "mix it manually"?

@whose

Would this Tray loading Pioneer work?

Pioneer DR-466 12x SCSI CD-ROM Drive

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios