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Dear Mike, Thanks for all your time on LM_NET! I hope I can share a little information on y our CD-ROM setup. First the engineering of the system is probably more important than just the num ber of drives. The "Towers" are just recepticals for the drives, nothing more. Seven drives are maximum as one SCSI controller handles 7 devices. Each tower will then need a SCSI controller. Three towers, three controllers in the server. This is just about the max for most servers as you will run out of interrupts for most SCSI controller types, in fact you might have to limit on e of the towers to 5 or 6 CD-ROMs if you are using SCSI Hard Drives. The first hurdle in deciding how many CD-ROMs you can handle will be an analysi s of your current system. What is the speed of the system? 10Base-T at 10 mips? 100Base-T or fiber ? Also the number of nodes and configuration of your hubs to analize the traffic flow (before you put in the CD-ROMs) Check the monitor program on your server to find out current utilizatio n of the system. Remember to increase the size of your server memory for every drive you install 1/2 meg per drive is a starting point and 1 meg per drive is not out of line with some configurati ons. (You will need to system cache the drives.) Finally you need to address the impact of the media your are putting in. If all 21 drives are going to be in heavy use by 100 user you can't expect the system to handle the b andwidth. If in fact only 4 or 5 are in heavy use and the rest occasional use or metered use you might be able to handle it. Sincerely, Don Shields Mammoth Unified School District 6514431@mcimail.com