CD-LAB
by
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Francois Galea aka
Zerkman of Sector One
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What ? CD writing on an Atari ? That's just about as impossible as surfing
the web with an Atari and a good reason to buy a PC for.
Totally wrong.
Okay, yes, you might answer, maybe possible, but the software, CDRecorder Pro,
is so extremely expensive. Wrong again since you don't need CDRecorder Pro. Not
to mention that Anodyne Software just updated their CDWriter Suite, there is
also CDLab from Sector One and even though it can currently only copy CDs,
it's a fantastic package for very little money.
So what do you need to copy CDs using an Atari ?
First, you need an Atari with a SCSI-hostadapter, a CD-Writer, a harddisk with
about 800 MB free space and if you want it more comfortably, an additional
CD-ROM. Furthermore, you need a SCSI-driver which supports a kind of a generic
SCSI instruction set. HDDriver does that, HuSHI, AHDI and some others don't.
CBHD does that as well which is free but not unproblematic. Then you need CDLab
which is shareware. It is fully functional without registering but it will only
allow 1x speed writing in unregistered mode, and registering seems to cost as
little as 25.- DM.
So what can CDLab do ? CDLab basically consists of 3 functions:
- CD copying
- CD-RW blanking
- TOC reading
CD Copying.
Pretty easy to understand. You can select to copy directly from CD-ROM to
CD-Writer, use a temporary DAO (Disk-At-Once)-file which contains the CD-ROM
data (the only way to do it if you only have a CD-Writer) or do a simulated
write which can be handy sometimes as it might spare you a few ruined
CD-Writables.
CD-RW blanking
If your CD-Recorder is capable of handling CD-ReWritables (CD-RW), you can
empty a CD-RW using CDLab. This can be done quickly (basically only delete the
table of contents) or the hard way (delete every track).
TOC reading
TOC stands for table of content and if you have a CD with more than one track,
this might come in handy as CDLab allows to extract Audio-data from CDs in
various formats by reading the TOC and extract the appropriate track
afterwards.
Now copying a CD means handling a lot of data. A CD-ROM usually contains 650 MB
of data and for systems like the Atari ST, TT or Falcon this quite a lot. Even
worse, if you have a quick CD-Writer and want to copy CDs as quickly as
possible your beloved Atari needs to handle A LOT of data in a very SHORT time.
In other words, an Atari 520 ST will not copy a CD in 4x speed. And most
probably not in 2x either. Single speed means about 170KB/sec, which might
appear little by today's standards, but it is a lot for an Atari computer. And
writing to a CD-R does not only mean to bring this data from the memory to the
CD-Writer but also to get it into the computer from either a CD-ROM or your
harddisk, so double the amount of data that needs to be transferred to write a
CD in single speed.
In other words: A Falcon or a TT would be a lot better for using a CD-Writer on
an Atari. And even those are a bit slowish when it comes to transferring data.
The older TTs achieve roughly 2.5 MB/sec over their SCSI-bus, the newer ones
rather 2.2 MB/sec to 2.3 MB/sec. This is almost sufficient for 4x speed (720
KB/sec) since the computer also needs to actively control the CD-Writer. It is
possible to use a CD-Writer in 4x speed on a TT, but it definetly is the limit.
2x is the safer option for sure.
Same goes for the Falcon which has a relatively slow SCSI-system anyway. On an
untuned Falcon, the SCSI-Bus does about 1.5 MB/sec, not really enough for 4x
but pretty good for 2x. If you have an accelerated Falcon and a SCSI-harddisk,
unfortunately, this won't help much since the SCSI-Bus of the Falcon does not
benefit from accelerated busspeed, the pipe inside the SCSI is the limit. If
you, however, can use an IDE-harddisk as temporary space and if your IDE-disk
can copy with a bus-accelerator, you've just won the lottery : 2.5 MB/sec and
more is easily possible then, enough to drive a CD-Writer in 4x with excellent
reliability.
On the Atari ST/STE it looks a lot duller of course. Forget the original Mega
STE hostadapter and get a Link'97 for maximum reliability. You should also not
forget that the more memory your Atari has, the bigger the buffer for data in
RAM is and the easier it gets for CDLab to compensate flaws in the data-stream.
A 1 MB Atari ST has to completely fill and empty its RAM 650 times to fill a
CD, a 4MB one only 167.5 times, not counting the memory CDLab needs for itself.
In other words, if you want to copy CDs on your trusty old ST, at least make it
a high-end Atari ST. But writing in 1x speed should basically be possible on
almost any Atari ST.
Well, writing a CD in 4x speed doesn't sound very hot nowadays anymore.
However, copying a CD in 4x speed, even with temporary file on the harddisk,
takes roughly 40 minutes. Writing in 8x might spare you some minutes, but with
an interim-file it will still be roughly around half an hour.
(4x - best case 18,5 minutes without opening and fixating
8x - best case 9.3 minutes without opening and fixating, however
opening and fixating is about equal in speed on both)
So unless you don't want to copy masses of CDs, I guess 4x is a decent speed
indeed and absolutely sufficient.
And how about CDLab ? Well, it does its job very well. The user interface is
excellent and easy to understand, it has online-help as well as bubble-help, it
has self-explanatory dialogues, shortcuts and it's 100 % reliable. It has never
crashed on me and on the Falcon, I only wasted 2 CD-writeables so far by trying
to copy protected CDs. Not to mention that CDLab copies really a lot. And
handles a lot of CD-Recorders, too.
Well, one disadvantage remains - CDLab only copies CDs so far. It is not
capable of mastering a CD like CDWriter Suite from Anodyne or CDRecorder Pro
from Soundpool can do.
But, it's a shareware program and it is still being developed. It can put
Image-files of CDs nicely to disk so what is needed now is a program to turn
files you want to have on CD to a CD-image. And this is exactly what Zerkman is
working on right now. So far it is not finished yet, but i personally think the
worst part is done since the actual CD-Writing routines are already there.
So if CD-Writing or copying crossed your mind and you were jealously looking at
your friend's PC or Macintosh - don't look no more. CDLab had a terrific start
as a CD-copy program, I'm sure it will have a terrific future as CD-Mastering
program.
The Paranoid
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