On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, Paul Mather wrote:

=> Has anyone successfully used cdrecord (from pkgsrc) on a DEC
=> 3000/300?  I am thinking of getting a CD-RW unit for home use, but I
=> want to make sure the hardware can handle it before I do.
=> 
=> I recently borrowed a CD-R unit (Smart and Friendly 2006+), but neither
=> cdrecord nor the DEC 3000/300 seemed to like it much.  (The bootup SCSI
=> test failed with a 160 error!)  Cdrecord generated SCSI errors in the
=> console, and generally wouldn't work.  Cdrdao worked somewhat (I could
=> get it to list a TOC of sorts), and I was able to extract audio using
=> cdparanoia.  The S&F 2006+ is somewhat old, so I am hoping to borrow a
=> Plextor 12/4/32 SCSI CD-RW to try that, too.

To follow up my own post, it seems the Smart and Friendly was neither
smart nor friendly, because the Plextor worked like a dream on my DEC
3000/300 (software, hardware et al).

The only thing I couldn't get it to do was burn at 12x (it would
eventually buffer underrun).  The maximum it could manage was 8x.  I'm
guessing the SCSI bus on the DEC 3000/300 just can't handle sustained
12x data transfer.

Does anyone know what is the top SCSI bandwidth of the 3000/300?  I've
never seen anything above ~3400K/sec reported by systat, and, by my
reckoning, 12x burning needs ~3600K/sec (~1800K from the disc and the
same to the CD writer)...

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa