🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4j6vqn$qra@soap.news.pipex.net>, gm78@dial.pipex.com (Matt Francis) writes:
|> ep@iist.unu.edu (Erwin Paguio) wrote:
|> 
|> >In article <sehari.827706428@eng3.iastate.edu>, sehari@iastate.edu (Babak $ehari) writes:
|> >|> ----
|> >|> 
|> >|> I am looking for a book or other informative material about reading
|> >|> and writing tracks of a CD-ROM.  Can I do it with BIOS only or do I
|> >|> need DOS?  Is it any different from reading and writing regular floppy
|> >|> or hard disks?!
|> >|> 
|> >|> I Like to do this in C or C++, if there is any good library that can
|> >|> read or write sectors/tracks of CD-ROM.  If that is not
|> >|> possible, I like to know about BIOS INT or DOS INT that does this.

I think MSCDEX hooked INT 25h and 26h so that you can perform disk read or
write (if the drive is capable) just like on an ordinary hard disk...

|> >|> Any good assembly books that talks about this subject?
|> >|> 
|> >|>                             With highest regards,
|> >|>                                  Babak   Sehari.
|> >|> 
|> 
|> >I suggest you look at the MSCDEX documentation.  It discusses the ways on how to
|> >read from a CDROM.  As reagrds to writing to one, I don't have any idea -- but I
|> >think your CDROM drive must support it before you can perfrom a write.
|> 
|> You can't write to a CD-ROM. Just to remind, the RO part stands for
|> "read-only". 

I think the original poster meant CD-R for writing and CDROM for reading.
There already a couple of drives allowing for personal mastering of CDs.

|> There is such a thing as a CD-ROM burner (for people with
|> $many) which will write whole CDs at a time on special writeable
|> blanks, but this is still write-once - you can't change it thereafter.

Yes, the technology only allows for writing unto the disc once...

|> [at a push, these will do multiple "sessions" on one CD, sequentially,
|> but for technical reasons, you lose a number of megs per new "session"
|> apart from whatever it is you want to write]. 

A new session would take about 9MB of space.  But I've read in an article
once that you could create new volumns instead which only take around 300KB
of overhead (which is much better than 9MB).

|> If you want to use one of these, I believe (being far too poor to own 
|> one myself!) 

Same here :-(

|> that they generally need their own, proprietary software, which will 
|> probably be sold seperately to you for another $many.

Most CD recorders use proprietary software.  But more often, the software
is bundled with the drive when you buy it.  I myself am on the lookout for
any information of how to go about doing a CD writer software.  Unfortunately,
I haven't found any material discussing that nor the drive to test it.  
Maybe next year....

YO!
-- 
Erwin D. Paguio
http://rh.iist.unu.edu/~ep/ydeeps.html
Pascal and ASM Enthusiast