@whose

How about a Yamaha CRW2100S?

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

@BigD

I cannot say with 100% certainity, but as far as I can read in the Pioneer SCSI2 command manual, most of the supported commands are like the ones used in MMC command set. Probability is high.

The Yamaha drive seems to be supported by SCSI3-ATAPI driver of MakeCD, too, so it is quite probably using MMC2.

Last edited by whose on 11-Mar-2010 at 11:56 AM.

@whose

This doesn't sound so good for the Yamaha CRW2100S

"The ATA CRW2100E had problems extracting smoothly from our test CD-DA. The SCSI CRW2100S has very similar problems. Brand-new discs extract at or close to Yamaha's 40X Max spec, while even slightly scratched discs lead to inconsistent DAE speeds - lots of spinning down mid-extraction and dips and valleys in the DAE graph. CDSpeed99 measures minimum extraction rates of just under 17X while average DAE across the disc is about 25X. Because of all the spinning down at the outer edge of our CD-DA, we could not measure consistent DAE speeds towards the end of the disc. The presented DAE graph is the one most typical out of the various runs performed. "

Yamaha CRW2100S Review

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

@Thread

I'm guessing that this would do the job too?

PLEXTOR PX-40TSI

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

@BigD

As I said earlier, the Yamaha drives arent good quality at all. But they do the trick, if theyre not damaged.

If youre in doubt, try to get a Pioneer drive, or an el cheapo IDE drive from >2000. For me, my old Pioneer drive (I dont even remember the model number, I have it for quite a long time now) worked fine all the time and the command set seems to resemble most of the MMC2/3 commands and there are a few additional ones (e.g. track relative audio playback).

You simply had bad luck with the Toshiba drive, the older ones arent supporting the newer audio playback command (couldnt remember yet if it was the 10 or 12 type) that was introduced with the MMC command set.

Btw., best method is to try out a drive, so youre most sure about its capabilities regarding Amiga games with CDDA music

@BigD

I dont know the Plextor drive and cannot find any information about the command set it uses.

I looked at my Pioneer drive now, it is a "DR-503S". Its a 24X drive, slot in.

@whose

Quote:

looked at my Pioneer drive now, it is a "DR-503S". Its a 24X drive, slot in.

If that model works perfectly for what I want to do then I will try and find one! This seems like a mine-field but I really appreciate your help!

I've found a source of Pioneer DR-503S models and will probably buy one of them if you assure me it will work with MMC commands and enable me to hear the CDDA music in Amiga games?

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

@whose

Quote:

What do you mean with "mix it manually"?

I mean the CDDA data must be read in and then the computer has to mix that data with anything else it is outputting. This probably isn't a problem on Windows where is has proper drivers making use of DSP and hardware mixing plus the fact that most people play mp3s on their PC's so I could see why they scraped the "CD player" out of the drives.

But on OS4 such an operation is expensive as we don't have a proper hardware driver for common cards like an SB5.1 so AHI must then mix the CDDA with other tracks it is playing. You may think with an 800MHz CPU that soft-mixing isn't much but AHI on OS4 is easily tripped up. Play a sample in MultiView then try and multitask. It easily stutters.

I hate to say it but the worst case of this is my Maestrix. Start playing a module in OctaMED then go and do sometihng else, even with barely any impact on the CPU, and the sound will lose it and stutter to the crap house! I play a module using OctaMED on my real Amiga and it's fine. Audio on OS4 is crap!

Okay I've gone off topic.

@BigD

If you can wait til this evening? A friend of mine will visit me, hes interested in Amiga since a few weeks, too and wanted to see the old ladies work here. For this occasion I will reactivate my A1200 with the Pioneer and then I could test it using Exodus I will keep you informed then, if it works or not. But as far as I remember, it worked fine with audio playback.

@BigD

Quote:

Pioneer DR-466 12x SCSI CD-ROM Drive

That sounds like the drive I have in my A1200 tower. And I had at least one of my two drives hooked up to my Amiga's audio with my custom mixer--some resistors.

Quote:

How about a Yamaha CRW2100S?

I had a CRW2100SX-VX external. Still got the box! Good for burning. IIRC I never played CDDA with it but it does have RCA jacks on the back to suggest it does accept play commands. Then again, I may have plugged it in to my setup.

But the end result is these drives should work just fine. If you can get them for next to nothing it didn't cost much if it ends up on the trash heap.

Be funny if you got a working drive and then still couldn't get it work because of a mis configuration.

Last edited by Hypex on 11-Mar-2010 at 12:58 PM.

@Hypex

Ah, ok, now I understand. Audio is a split issue with OS4, I never had problems with the onboard sound of my MicroA1, plays MP3 fine and dandy all the time and without stuttering, except for really heavy CPU load. Heck, it even plays MP3 and direct audio output from a SATA DVD drive at the same time and flawlessy (reading audio data using MMC commands, like salass did with PlayCDDA). I know, this doesnt help you, but I think its often about the drivers...

Regards

@whose

Quote:

For this occasion I will reactivate my A1200 with the Pioneer and then I could test it using Exodus I will keep you informed then, if it works or not. But as far as I remember, it worked fine with audio playback.

Cheers! Ok, I'll wait for your feedback Nuke a few tanks for me

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

@BigD

Some status update... I had a game with Exodus already using my Pioneer DR-503S drive already, but actually Im struggeling to get my Delfina working in my A1200 tower, so that I could confirm working CDDA. May last some minutes But playing Exodus worked fine so far.

@BigD

Ok, I can confirm it now... playback of CDDA in Exodus works with the Pioneer DR-503S. Definetly!

And I nuked some tanks for you

Had some really bad problems to get my Delfina working, seems it conflicts with the IOBlix multi I/O card (or software) But its working now and plays nicely via my Microvitec M1438S monitor audio

@whose

Thanks for checking!

It's a shame that the Toshiba hasn't worked out. I found an Amiga site describe it as follows:

Quote:

Toshiba XM-6201B Rev. (?) (32x speed) [supports AUDIO via SCSI and very compatible]

Very compatible what does that mean?! Does support Audio via SCSI mean the SCSI Direct function you talked about supported by AsimCDFS? I guess because it's MPC rather than MMC compliant it creates issues with CDDA in games?!

Oh well, I guess I'll be trying a Pioneer DR-503S then!

Sorry to hear about your problems with the Delfina.

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

@whose

I just worked out what MCP stands for!

The Toshiba XM-6201B is Microsoft Multimedia-PC Level Microsoft Multimedia PC-3 compliant!

Yuck!! Was this an attempt by Microsoft to tie up the CD-Rom command sets into a proprietary system? The MMC (Multimedia Commands) I guess were an open format in comparison? History just keeps on repeating itself with Microsoft! DirectX anyone?! I can't decide which company is more 'evil', Microsoft, Apple or Google?

I'm prepared to forgive Apple for most of their crimes (except the Apple TV) because their products look and feel so great. The prices suck though!

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

@BigD

Yeah, wasnt nice from the Toshiba drive I dont know what they mean exactly with "very compatible", maybe youre right with MPC-2 etc.

And yes, audio via SCSI is the function used by AsimCDFS (and OS4 CacheCDFS via MMC commands) to treat audio tracks as AIFF files.

You will like the Pioneer, I think. Its very stable (good slot in mechanism) and it reads CD-RW, too, although its a quite old drive. It works fine with PlayCD, btw.

Well, the Delfina is working now, its very strange that it made problems in my A1200. It seems that there are conflicts with the IOBlix multi I/O card software. And thats even more strange as both worked (more or less) nicely in my A4000 (the A4000 has a Toccata now, as the Delfina froze quite often when doing MP3 playback).

Well, I will try further to get them both working Glad that I could help you a bit with your issue and I hope that youll get a cheap Pioneer drive (they couldnt be expensive these days) and enjoy playing Exodus including CDDA (and forget about the troubles you had)

@BigD

Well, both command sets are quite open today. You will find information about the command set used by Toshiba as well as all drafts on MMC (they are up to MMC6 these days). Its much harder to find CDDA specification I did some kind of CDDA player for drives without audio part (salass did, too) and found all the commands needed very easily. There were even enough informations to drive e.g. a CD changer

Btw., it seems that the Pioneer supports some of the Toshiba commands, too. At least I could use some older programs for Toshiba drives to extract CDDA tracks for playback. Ok, not needed for simple playback (using the audio playback capabilities needs much less CPU), but...

@whose

Pioneer DR-503S on order! Only cost me $6.95 but as it's from America it'll cost me $24.90 total. It's still a lot cheaper than some of the other drives I was looking at (and asking you about ).

I'm just happy I can now experiment with something that I know should work! It's been a learning experience but I feel like I know more than I started!

The only thing that troubles me now is how an A4000T mixes the A4000T Paula sound with the CD-Rom audio. I guess I'd need to cable up the audio out from the CD-ROM into a sound card to do that? I am so used to using my CD32 SX32 where all this is just automatic! I suppose buying a Concierto for my Picasso IV would be the best solution?

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

@Thread

Just read that on the A4000T audio board there is an input connector for CD-ROM/DSP audio. The sound is mixed with the Amiga audio so that you can listen to audio CD's with the equipment attached to your Amiga's RCA connectors.!

What cabling would I need?

Actually, I think it's already attached looking at the connector type! So, I just unclip from the old drive and plug into the Pioneer presumably.

I assume this is the type of cable:


CD-Rom Audio Cable

Last edited by BigD on 12-Mar-2010 at 11:08 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 12-Mar-2010 at 11:07 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 12-Mar-2010 at 11:02 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 12-Mar-2010 at 11:02 AM.

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