Re: Somewhat OT question about CD-ROM speeds

"Yves Deweerdt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Norm Dresner wrote:
> > We've all seen CD-ROMs spec'ed by speed as 2x, 4x, ... 56x and so on.
But
> > what exactly are these numbers multiplying?  What does 1x really mean?
Is
> > it some baseline bit/byte rate?
> >
> >     Norm
> >
> >
>
> http://www.piesoftwareinc.co.uk/textonly/cdrom.html
>
> Single speed is 150KBps as you can read in the article above...

    The reason I asked was that I have an ancient SCSI CD-ROM drive for my
SGU Indigo2 which I believed to be a 1x drive.  It achieved a sustained
transfer rate of 8.6 MB/Min or 146 MB/Sec so I guess that indeed verifies my
suspicion that it is indeed 1x.  BTW, if anyone asks you, it takes ~72
minutes to transfer the contents of a full (655MB) CD-ROM at 1x.

    Norm