We use a Yamaha CD104 with a fast 2.3 Gb IBM hard drive in a minitower
SCSI-connected to a Mac PowerPC 7200.  This is in a predominately Mac
environment with a Windows NT server .  Files are drag-and-dropped on
the minitower drive or ftp'd to the server and dragged over at the 7200,
or at remote Macs/Windows anywhere on campus.  We also use 650 Mb phase
change re-writeable optical drives (PD650) either in the 7200's scsi
chain, or on a networked Mac, to load the CD writer's drive.  Files from
our OS/2 confocal system are either ftp'd to the server or walked over
on PD650 disks. They can also be ftp'd off the confocal with the PPC
7200. The CD writer is controlled by Toast, which has been extremely
reliable and user friendly.

The only caveat is that one must turn off file sharing on the host Mac
before starting to write a CD.  We simply use the Applescripts that came
with the Mac OS to turn file sharing off, then back on at the end of the
burn session.  This is the equivalent of unplugging the PC from the
network.  We lost 2 disks probably from forgetting to turn off
filesharing, then someone else on the network trying to get to that
computer's drive.  A 3rd disk was lost since the early PCI bus PowerPCs
had a problem with SCSI address 5, where I had originally set the CD
writer.

A note on Software Architects, their SCSI control software for the PC is
called FormatterOne Pro.  I replaced Corel SCSI2 with it for a SCSI-bus
PC with much better results and  compatibility, especially with
removable media drives >1 Gb.  Unfortunately, they have nothing similar
for OS/2.


Glen MacDonald
Virginia Bloedel Hearing Research Center
Box 35-7923
University of Washington
Seattle, WA  98195-7923
(206) 616-4156
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The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better.", so I bought a Macintosh.
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