SCSI CD drive capable of reading CD-R (long)

[Billy Pettit]

In 1999, I went to work for Philips, managing customer support for CD 
burners and DVD burners.

State of the art then was 2X, going to 4X.  There were very few 
suppliers of RW media or burners; Sony had the biggest market share but 
exited quickly to free up capacity for the PlayStation 2.

Philips had a large lab in Hasselt, Belgium.  One section was to test 
all media in the marketplace to see that it was within spec, would work 
on the Philips' drives.  And most importantly, that it was legal; ie 
paid the license fees to the patent owners - Philips, Sony, HP etc. 
CD-R and CD-RW fees are a huge source of income. And that little logo on 
the doors of drives also means that they paid the fees, another large 
source of revenue.  This IP is agressively enforced.

The test lab was fascinating.  They went through thousands of disks a 
month.  Various offices of Philips around the world would buy the media 
and send it in for testing and fee verification.  Hong Kong, Taipei, and 
Seoul all sent in big boxes every month.

There were many tools used to verify the p[hysical parameters and the 
electrical.  They even had a calibrated dust machine to test door seals 
and dust read through.  It was literally a chamber that would be filled 
with different particle sizes of fine dust for hours on end.

I also got to visit the R&D lab in Eindhoven, where the original work on 
CDs took place.  The still have the original CD that was the first to be 
read.  And it can still be read.

All of this leads up to some of the information being tossed out on this 
thread.  I'll try to put down what I know.

1.  There are very few high volume suppliers in the world of good tight 
tolerance polycarbonate disks.  They have a huge investment in automated 
  manufacturing equipment.  Just like ICs makers, the start up costs 
prevent most companies from entering the market.

2.   Thus, most CD-Rs and DVD+/-Rs come from a small number of physical 
plants.  In 2000, you could count them on one hand.  Since then, they 
may have doubled.

3.  The major differences in media came from the dye and the process to 
deposit the dye.  Many companies (such as Philips, HP, Memorex, TDK) 
have a propietory dye they have developed themselves.  They contract out 
the manufacturing of the actual disks.  As with any outsourcing, some 
companies may have multiple sources for the same part number.

4.  Getting these processes under control takes time.  The quality of 
parts made this year is orders of magnitude better than it was in 2000 
and 2001.  If you are making decisions based on media purchased a few 
years ago, your data points don't reflect what is out there today.

This is one of the reasons for the varied experiences on the same media. 
  The factories could be different, the processes better, the formula 
changed.  But the brand and model number could be the same.

5.  Saying a certain brand is crap, and another outstanding may be only 
a personal bias.  For example, in the ealy days of DVD+RW disks, I 
visited the factory that Philips used for their brand name.  In the same 
building, I saw production lines for the other 5 companies shipping 
DVD+RW at that time.  In other words, it all came from the same factory! 
  A couple of days later, I was in CompUSA and salesman lectured me on 
how one brand was so bad they didn't carry it any more; but Brand X 
really had their act together.  Both brands literally came from the same 
line and dye process - they were under a cross licensing agreement.

6.  There CAN be very real differences of user experiences.  But media 
is not the only factor, not even the biggest factor.  Just like magnetic 
media, these are complex systems of media, read/write channels,OPU 
construction, chip sets, software and firmware.

7.  Lasers are an exception.  There were only 2 laser sources in 2000 
for CD-R devices.  They used the Seagate "waterfall" priciple:  the 
tightest spec parts went to the biggest buyer or payer of the best 
prices.  Further down, parts with wider specs went to the next tier of 
OEMs.  Finally at the bottom, what's left went to the companies you 
never heard of - they don't sell in the US marketplace for obvious reasons.

The lasers go into OPUs (Optical Pick Up Units).  There are again only 
a handful of OPU suppliers in the world.  For a long time, if you bought 
a CD-R drive, the OPU came from one of two companies, regardless of the 
brand of the drive.  Today 3 companies still have most of the market.

8.  Another factor being ignored in this dicussion is the progress made 
in improving reliability.  The CD recordable market went from 2X to 52X 
in around 3 years.  Depending on how you count, that was 10 or 11 
generations.  Entire new chip sets and suppliers suddenly appeared, 
leveraging of the previous generations.  New features were added.  The 
firmware solved the over/under run problems, then the tracking at higher 
RPM, then the read through scratches, thermal compensation for thinner 
dye etc.  Recently, the first SATA drives showed up.

Unless you buy new drives every six months, your experience on a given 
drive and media can be radically different from somebody else with the 
same combination but newer/older than you.

9.  After being involved with tens of thousands of disks burned, I have 
data that shows very little difference in performance from one type of 
media over another.  There ARE some really crappy disks coming out of 
China - I've seen some I could read a newspaper through.  Another 
factory ships everything pre-scratched.  But with rare exceptions, these 
disks never reach the US or Europe.

If you have personal preferences that lead you to pick one brand over 
another, go with it,  But base your decision on the results of YOUR 
drive with YOUR media.  If you run into a nay-sayer for a particular 
type, ask for his data - what drive, what media etc.  The hits being 
given to certain suppliers or factories are probably not based on large 
scale testing on multiple drives.  Some of these opinions don't sound 
like they are based on data at all.

The current quality and state of the art at some of the companies being 
run down in this forum are excellent.  It is probably 90-10 a drive or 
software problem rather than a media issue.  Make your decisions on your 
data, not someone else's bias.

Billy