A solution that enables developers to make a single CD-ROM that supports the Unix, Macintosh and PC platforms has been announced by software developer Creative Digital Research. (CDR) and DynaTek Automation Systems, a maker of storage products .
Until now, recordable CD-ROM users had to create a separate disk for each platform, or else record more than one version of the data on a single disk, duplicating much of the information and hence using up more space.
By using HyCD, CDR's hybrid CD-ROM recording format, developers can record a single version of the data on a single CD-ROM that is compatible across multiple platforms.
The companies have bundled HyCD with DynaTek's CDM 4000 CD-recordable drive, producing a unit with a quad speed CD-ROM recorder, a quad speed CD-ROM reader, a 1G-byte multimedia hard drive and a controller unit that brings those devices together.
CDR offers two versions of its HyCD software, for Windows and for Unix. A PC version bundled with the CDM 4000 is available immediately, priced at US$1299, and a bundled Unix version will be available in February, priced at $2259, says Richard Khan, product marketing manager at DynaTek.
"What's unique about the CDM 4000 is that you can unplug the computer from the recorder after you create the first CD-ROM and it acts as a standalone duplication station with a user friendly control panel," says Paul Ling, president of CDR. "That's really useful in networking and enterprise environments."
The unit supports data transfer rates from 150K bytes-per-second to 600 K bytes-per-second (quad speed), and integrates the following formats: ISO 9660 (for the PC), Joint File System (for Windows 95 and NT), HFS (for the Mac) and ISO 9660 with Rockridge Extension (for Unix).
A second product bundle is planned that will include DynaTek's CDM 400 4x CD-ROM recorder.
DynaTek, in Bedford, Nova Scotia, can be contacted on the Web at http://www.dynatek.ca/. Creative Digital Research, in San Jose, California, is at +1 408-255-0999, and at http://www.cdr1.com/.