Networking CD-ROMs

[Dean C. Rowan]

Cynthia at Englewood Public asked:

> Does anyone have experience doing this in a Windows '95 environment?
> I have a small library and want to begin networking our OPAC's,
> stand-alones, typewriters. <G>

I have been hoping to set up a very simple Windows95 peer-to-peer 
"network," but circumstances keep changing.  I would think that once 
you've gotten beyond, say, three or four workstations, you will want 
to introduce "real" networking software.

We do have a small network for CD-ROM products running Novell 
3.something-or-other with Windows95 on the workstations.  I did not 
build the network but I looked over the shoulder of the guy who did.  
There are some problems getting Windows95 and Novell to operate 
together harmoniously, it seems, but the network is so simple that it 
tends to run alright as long as other factors don't interrupt, e.g., 
defective drives or SCSI cards.

The guy who built the network is with a vendor here in southern 
California, APS, whose real business is venda-card machines.  That 
is, they attach machines to your printers, copiers, workstations and,
yes, even typewriters, which allow folks to use magnetically stripped 
cards to which they "add" value a buck at a time.  Great idea, once 
people get used to the technology.  What I'm getting at is that you 
may have a similar sort of vendor in your neck of the woods.  APS 
brought in four copiers, two LANs, three microform reader/printers 
and two PC workstations at no charge.  We give them a sizable cut of 
the take until we earn commissions for higher revenues.  Furthermore, 
the people at APS are very patient, pleasant to work with and 
knowledgeable.  So, there's a plug for APS.
 
> I'm looking for a "favorite vendor" to buy my CD jukeboxes from, any
> suggestions?

You probably don't mean "jukeboxes" if that term means what I think 
it means, namely, CD changer.  Jukeboxes store many CDs--six, ten, 
hundreds--but play only one at a time.  That sorta undermines the 
idea of a network.  More likely you mean "tower."  (I could be 
wrong.)

There is a company in the San Francisco area, SCS Technologies, I 
think, with whom I recently had a discussion about CD-ROM towers, 
networks and hard drives.  This company claims to have developed a 
sort of hybrid solution to networking CD-ROM publications.  They use 
towers for some products, jukeboxes for others--e.g., children's 
multi-media titles--and hard drive storage for others.  They claim to 
have developed software which copies CD-ROM data to the hard drive 
maintaining the CD's ISO 9660 format.  (Please don't ask me if I know 
what I'm talking about.)  Readers of this list may be able to 
elaborate from there.  Ultimately, as one message has already noted, 
reading the data from the hard drive is faster than from the CD-ROM, 
and massive hard drive prices are not exceedingly high.

Dean C. Rowan
Whittier Public Library