Hit: Procom CD Tower

[James Mong <jmong@NEPTUNE.ESC.K12.IN.US>]

Hello fellow netters--
        I've been meaning to post a hit on this query I made for over a
month but the pressures of the end of school plus a natural inclination
to sloth as summer nears, have kept me from it.  To refresh your memory,
I had asked about a Cd tower system called Procom that maps on the file
server as a single drive.  This would be much preferable to taking one
"drive" on the server for each CD you want on the network.  So, here are the
responses I got.  Apologies for the tardiness.


                James Mong

Riverview Middle School-- Huntington, IN 46750
jmong@neptune.esc.k12.in.us
 Summer--a time when you never have to tell someone where the pencil
sharpener is!!


We have been using it this year on our schoolwide network and have been
very pleased with it.  But I just order the CD's we run on it, and our
Networking Specialist (2 periods a day) runs it, so you would have to ask
him any technical questions. His name is Gary Gustafson, and email is
   garyg@chs.mat-su.k12.ak.us

Pat Wamsley (patw1@muskox.alaska.edu)



Greetings,

My library has one of the Procomm units. In our configuration it is one
of two CD-ROM "devices" attached to a small network - four terminals -
perhaps not a good indication of how it would work in a larger network.
The drives are lettered, but that's about as far as my knowledge of the
thing extends. I'd be pleased to answer any other questions you may have,
but my knowledge of how the product can be configured beyond our method
is non-existent. We've had the tower for about two years, and have found
it to be reliable.

Randall M.
Florida Southern College Library
Lakeland.



We have a CD SERVER that is not procom.  We use OPTINET software on the CD
SERVER and all of the CD's are mapped to E:.  We started off with two CD ROM
drives and have now added up to ten drives.  We are only limited by
theKnumber of slots available to use as SCSI slots.  After that point is reached
we can simply add another tower or computer.  We use Novell 3.12 and IBM
ICLAS as our network software.  Optinet costs $1495 for the 100 user
(dos/windows) version.  I think it is a fine program and you can start small
and work your way up to a larger tower as needed.

Lee Milner
Torrington High School
LAN SYSOP



James, You might want to look into the new Meridian tower that just came out.
Meridian has an excellent reputation, comes with Tosheba(sp?) drives, and
might be a little less expensive than the tower you are looking at.
Jeff
jriedi@aol.com or jriedi@omnifest.uwm.edu orjriedi@execpc.com


James, I have the tower you desribe. It is a nightmare. Their tech support
insupportable. I also use a Meridian Tower which I feel is much better. I have
never had a problem with it. Kathryn Valvano, Morris Hills HS, Rockaway, NJ
:-)




In our library we use the Meridian CD-ROM tower.  It maps to only two
drives and I have four drives.  It is "smart", has it's own cpu, and is
virtually trouble free.  I have had no trouble at all this year.  I am
adding four more drives to it this summer.  Call Follett and get some
information from them about it.  It is great..The software that comes
with it is CD-NET...they also sent a modem and PC_Anywhere software and
actually connected to my server and helped me set it up and install it.
Hope this helps!
Sheila Moody
Alamogordo High School
Alamogordo, NM
snsmoody@arriba.nm.org



Interesting, don't you think??