Nakamichi Mj5.16

[netcat]

I have seen several threads on these drives but am unsure what the current status is.

I built a 7 DRIVE tower that supports a total of 35 disks at a time, untill now I have been using with Riptastic and an adaptec USB to SCSI XCHANGE adapter, it works relatively well but is a bit dated and is no longer in development.

so... Here go the questions

A. does your software currently support these drives and recognize them by LUN number (instead of drive letter) therefore supporting all 7 drives simultaneously?

B. If LUN is not currently supported will it support them by assgning them a directory name from within the DISK MANAGMENT utility in XP ?

C. Hers the kicker... If supported can it Rip from ALL 7 drives simultaneously (1 disk in each unit at a time obviously)

in theory it is possible in SCSI chains and would bring whole new dimension to CD Ripping with these drives

also as a side note what CD identification databases do you currently support?

Thanks.

Tony

[Spoon]

These drive are currently not supported.

[EliC]

Tony,
dBpoweramp uses 4 cd meta-data databases; AMG, GD3, MusicBrainz, and freeDB. These are used at the same time and the results are compared between them to come up with the BEST data - spoon has dubbed the system PerfectMeta.

[netcat]

Any intention of supporting any of what I have suggested here ?

The author of "Riptastic" migh be persuaded to share his code/knowledge regarding these drives since he no longer develops this application, I have spoken with him a couple of times and he is a really niche chap.

I mean not to preassure, but.... can you imagine ripping 7 CDs simultaneously (5 times in a row) that is real power, what may I do to persuade the developers to look into this further?


Thanks again

Tony

[Spoon]

Batch ripper needed individual drive letters to rip from.

[netcat]

Yes Spoon I appreciate all your advice concerning the reasons it did/does not work, the beauty of code is that it can be modified provided their is an inclination to do so

Now with that out of the way, I would like to ask again, is their any way I might incentivate the author (not sure if it is you SPoon) or developers to implement what I have previously suggested ?

Thanks

[Spoon]

Our programs cannot rip from Lun drives, batch ripper calls another ripper to do the ripping.

[netcat]

OK Spoon.

I can sense you are not "Dumb" and appreciate your effort to be "Pollitically correct" but this conversation is going nowhere really fast.

Perhaps you would like to email me directly so we can further discuss this ?

tony (at) 780 tech (dot) com

[LtData]

netcat: the issue is, the batch ripper simply calls the CD ripper for each drive, but the CD ripper cannot see the "LUN" drives and therefore neither can the batch ripper.

[netcat]

YES. I understand the Issue.

Can you change it ?

[netcat]

I will assume the lack of a resonse as:

A. we have no idea how to correct this shortcoming.

or

B. We have no interest in enhancing the functionality of the software.

If you wish to clarify, we are all ears.

Thanks again

[bhoar]

I will assume the lack of a resonse as:

A. we have no idea how to correct this shortcoming.

or

B. We have no interest in enhancing the functionality of the software.

I'm pretty sure the answer is B.

1. These drives audio rip at what, 4x maximum? Or are they faster?
2. They don't support C2.
3. *AND* by default, the show up with drive letters (until you run out).

It's a lost cause. Supporting these as LUN drives would require re-architecting several layers of code, when only a very narrow segment of the market would use them this way (I'd bet no more than 5-10 users). Really, this would not be a good use of spoon's time, in my opinion (though my opinion is just that, not too important in the grand scheme of things).

So, my recommendation would be to try a different tact:

1. Assume you need drive letters. This limits you to five units, max. ... probably four in the real world.
2. Write, or try to convince someone else to write, a changer driver for them for use with the batch ripper.

...or, sell the nakamichi drives and get a baxter or amtren/discmakers device. :)

-brendan

[netcat]

I appreciate your honest answer, it is quite refreshing.

Your points although not 100% correct are quite straight forward and well thought out (I appreciate the intelligent conversation).

I would like to mention just a couple of points that make these drives of particular interest to me and why I believe authors should pay more attention to them:

Applications can be coded to access SCSI devices by their LUN number, as already proven by the author of Riptastic, unfortunately he has moved on to other projects and no longer supports updates for this application.

In theory it is possible (with proper coding) to access all individual SCSI device simultaneously (inherent feature of SCSI buses) in my particular case this would mean accessing 7 Drives at once, yes their access rate is slow (4X) this however would mean ripping at an average of 28X (4 x 7)

It is also quite nice to be able to load 35 CDs at a time without spending $1000 on a cd changer unit, These drives can be purchased on eBay quite inexpensively, I believe I purchased 8 of them for about $10 a piece (1 spare as most SCSI busses allow only 7 devices) (obviously it requires time and patience to get the best deal)

Riptastic did (and does) a fine job at ripping, unfortunately it only looks up album info on freeDB therefore it is not able to accuratelly gather information for many albums and currently does not support the ability to rip from more than 1 device at a time

Basically all this amounts to is:

• Under $250 in parts to rip 35 CDs at a time
• Potential ability to rip these CDs in amounts of 7 (at the same time)
• Potential of ripping at an average of 28x

All things considered this is an exciting prospect to me hence my persistence at (at the very least) opening peoples eyes to the possibilities.

Thanks for listening

If you have a chance check out my projects at:

http://www.780tech.com/rockitica/jukebox/

and

http://www.780tech.com/arcade/