HIT>CD-ROM Towers

[CAROL SHERER <je2271lb@INK.ORG>]

Hi LM_NETTERS--

Following are the responses I've received concerning the TARGET>CD-ROM
Towers.  I appreciate everyone's input.

from Ken Ellis    Acton, Ontario, Canada:
   We have had an Hitachi Trillium tower with 4 drives and have had no
problems at all over 3-4 years.  There are some towers (Sun-tac in our
area sells a version) where you buy, let's say, an 8 slot tower, but can
afford to put in only three drives.  As money becomes available over the
succeeding years, one adds a drive at a time to the tower.  Also, the
advantage of this set-up also seems to be that if one drive becomes
defective, one simply unplugs it and sends it for repair while the tower
and the other drives remain workable.

from Kari Inglis    Columbus, OH
    If you are not networked, what you may want to look at for your
standalone is a 6-disc changer made by Pioneer.  It is easy to install and
we have used one with success for a couple of years.  We paid about 1300
for ours which at that time was the same as two standalones, so it was a
decent deal.  It can be accessed with a menu program, also.

from Karen Jean Hollenshead     Houston, TX
    I just returned from the Texas Library Assoc. Conference where I saw
an excellent CD-ROM tower system--I wish I had it instead of my present
one.  I'm not advertising but this is a Follett product.  It has two
distinct advantages over any others I've seen: (1) All CD products owned
by the library can be programmed into the system at the beginning of the
year, then slipped in and out of the drive as needed; (2) An internal
modem is built in so that Follett can instantly respond and correct any
problems that may arise.  I believe the cost is 2700 for the tower plus
700 for each drive.

from Steve Grant    La Jolla, CA
    I think that for the performance necessary for the future use of
multimedia on a network, you should consider a CD-ROM server (tower) as
opposed to just connecting a bunch of drives to your existing fileserver.
... A CD-ROM server is actually a separate CPU (computer) whose sole task
is to handle CD-ROM data requests....someone using Novell Netware v.4?
said that, despite Novell's claim that Netware could handle the CD-ROM
job, it just wasn't working, despite Novell's best efforts....Might want
to look into the now-available 100 megabit-per-second Ethernet cards; this
is ten times as fast as the previous.

from Melissa Davis      Splendora, TX
    Melissa sent a copy of the FAQ from CDROMLAN which will answer
questions you might have about CD-ROMs and networking.  It is available by
anonymous ftp  at ftp.cdrom.com  in /pub/cdrom as cdromlan.faq
or you can subscribe to CDROMLAN@IDBSU.IDBSU.EDU and they will send an
update the first of every month.

I am talking to a couple of people now about several ways to go with this
and asking for costs.  What I hope to be able to do is put in a tower (or
server) with part or all drive slots filled and have the capability of
networking other computers to it so more than one program can be used at a
time.
Thanks again to everyone who responded.

Carol Sherer
Library Media Specialist
Jetmore H.S. KS
je2271lb@ink.org