                     CD-ROM's and PC-NFS 
 
For sometime here at Bangor, we have been running diskless PC's with 
Sun's PC-NFS software. The PC's remote boot using the BOOTP protocol 
from a number of machines including HP's, Sun's and Vaxen running 
Multinet from TGV. It is possible on all these machines to mount 
various CD-ROM and export them as disks to the PC's which can mount 
them. 
 
This is great except that the most search software and application 
software which is run on DOS machines using CD-ROM's requires the 
existence of the MicroSoft CD-rom EXtensions (MSCDEX) before they can 
run. This is a TSR which provide attach points to the physical device 
driver shipped with the cd-rom drive itself. 
 
Until recently it was rare for the DOS search software to use more 
than 2 of the function provided by MSCDEX; one to find out if MSCDEX 
is loaded and what version the other which drive is the CD-ROM drive. 
 
Thus it was possible to write a dummy TSR which provided these 
function.  Such a dummy TSR was written by Digital Solutions, of 
Queensland Australia, who made it available to the public domain 
earlier this year.  This saved alot of work on my part !!. It works 
very well which most of the English, text based CD-ROM allowing the 
software provided with the CD-ROM to work first time. Here at Bangor 
we provide Whitaker's "Book's in Print", which uses BRS/search, "CAB" 
,which uses Silver Platter software plus one or two others that users 
want occasionally. 
 
With some more recent CD-ROM's they are also trying to detect the 
"Unique Volume ID" on each CD-ROM. This is much harder to fake as it 
varies from CD to CD but probably could be added in without too many 
problems, but the source code for the MXSUB utility, which produced the 
dummy MXCDEX stubs used by applications, written by Digital solutions, 
is not available and so a rewrite of it will be ncessary. 
 
I have been more interested in providing the audio services as well as 
the text services avialable on the CD-ROM. The approach I'm taking to 
these problems is as follows 
   
  There is a public domain Client-Server CD-ROM software avialable 
for reading DD1 Electronic Books on CD-ROM available from 
  nic.cic.net:/pub/netsoftware/deserver-2.0.tar.Z 
which provide a nice mechanism for sharing CD-ROM info with less 
powerful clients. 
  Also there are several control programs for CD-ROM drivers on 
Sun's which run as X widgets which also provide audio connections, 
the best of which is a thing call Xcdplayer which can be found all 
over the place using the "archie" archive searcher. 
 
Hopefull with the addition of the now beta-testing V3 socket libraries 
provided for PC-NFS it should be possible to provide an rpc connection 
mechanism to pass on MSCDEX calls. If I am sucessful down this route 
I will of course let you know. 
 
All of the above programs mentions are in the public domain and most 
come with source. 
 
 
