CD-ROMS

[Palter@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Gary M. Palter)]

    Date: Wed, 13 Feb 1991 12:33 EST
    From: drstrip@gnome.cs.sandia.gov (David R. Strip)

    Symbolics is pushing cd-rom distribution for genera 8.1 and
    I was wondering if anyone had attached such a beast yet. I 
    was unable to really determine from  customer service's 
    answer whether the software that comes with the cd-rom
    supports the "standard" (?) formats for cd-roms used by
    pc's and macs. Anyone got actual experience on this?
    Can the cd-rom be "mounted" as part of the LMFS, or
    at least some sort of file system, so that sources, for 
    example, could be read from the cd-rom instead of loading
    into the lmfs? ...
    strip

CD-ROM support is part of Genera 8.1.  Since Genera 8.1 hasn't shipped
yet, it's not possible to use CD-ROMs yet.

Actually, there is one exception to the above statement.  You can attach
a CD-ROM drive to a Macintosh and the Macintosh can then mount CD-ROMs
on its desktop.  A MacIvory can then access the CD-ROMs through the
host's file system (i.e., HOST:1CD Volume Name0:...) and other Lisp
machines can access it through the network by asking the MacIvory for
assistance (i.e., 1MacIvory-host-name0|HOST:1CD Volume Name0:...).

In Genera 8.1, we will provide the ability to access ISO9660 format
CD-ROMs directly as a separate file system on XLs and MacIvories.  
For UXes, you will be able to access ISO9660 disks in the Sun's CD-ROM
drive using NFS or TCP-FTP.

For example, on an XL or MacIvory, if my CD-ROM drive is SCSI unit #3, I
would access it's file system by saying something like

  Show Directory CDROM3:>

Of course, other Lisp machines will be able to access these file systems
over the network by saying something like

  Show Directory SOUR-CREAM|CDROM3:>

ISO9660 is an international standard for storing file systems on CD-ROM.
It provides a hierarchical file system.  Files have names, types, and
version numbers.  Continuing the above example, a typical pathname might be

  SOUR-CREAM|CDROM3:>IMAGES>NASA>MIRANDA>MIRANDA3.IMG;1

(Do not infer by the use of "IMG" as the type that there's a restriction
of 3 characters on type names.  The only restriction in the standard is
that the name and type together not exceed 30 characters.)

IS9660 is the successor to the format known as High Sierra.  However, we
will not support High Sierra format disks.

We intend to make it possible to access sources and documentation
directly from the CD-ROM if you setup your SYS host translations to
point to the ISO9660 file system on the disk.

  - Gary