How Many CDs Can You Burn at Once? 112
kfs27 asks: "In an attempt to help a professor of mine record and duplicate his lectures. I have been asked to put together a CD duplicating box. Commercial products seem to be very expensive and I figured a PC with some SCSI160 Cards (HW or SW Raid maybe), SCSI Burners and a 15K RPM drive (size not an issue) could do the job for cheaper. But the question is, how many CDs can you burn at once of 30 minutes, mono audio. 10 at a time would be excellent I think. More of course better. Cost is not a huge issue, as long as it's less than Commercial Duplicators, it's more of an experiment, but must be stable and easy to operate (I'd be willing to script up a frontend)."
RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:5, Informative)
We have one box here with 4 SCSI burners in it with a 700 meg ram drive. Everything works wonderfully in it.
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:3, Informative)
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:1)
Also, people could karma whore a comment up to +5 then change it to some goatse.cx esque drivel.
I agree though, use a service. Who wants to sit there and switch out 10,000 cds? You can get them with nice silkscreened labels, too, even on a cd-r.
furnace cd [furnacecd.com] has some great rates.
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:2)
As to solving the problem: I'd use a multi-threaded, multi-tasking operating system on a box with 10 SCSI CD-ROM burners and burn 10 disks in parallel (simultaneous but asynchronous -- launch 10 jobs all reading the same source but writing different destinations). You might need/want a huge RAM drive to hold the source, to ensure the 10 reads from one drive can keep up with the 10 parallel writes, but I don't know; maybe a fast hard drive is enough. It certainly depends on the speed of the box and the speed of the burners.
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:1)
I hope the poster needs at least a thousand of these, otherwise he's crazy to spend the money on the replicating system. Even then, furnacecd.com (to pick one company I trust) charges $0.89 each for orders over 500. And that is with a guaranteed 3 day turnaround.
I don't think he'd have posted this if he just needed 50 cds made. If he's building a system for $2000+ to make 50 cds when he could just pay $125 bucks instead, he's crazy.
Do the math! (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, another way around this would be to put CD burners on 10 existing PCs in a lab somewhere. Not as convenient, but workable and cheaper (assuming they can get time to use that lab :-)
Re:Do the math! (Score:3, Interesting)
your way would cost $0.89x500=$445/batch (not the $125 you claimed -- your math is flawed somewhere)
I said:
If he's building a system for $2000+ to make 50 cds when he could just pay $125 bucks instead, he's crazy.
I think your reading is flawed somewhere, I specifically wrote FIFTY, not 500. (The 500 number, which you took from elsewhere in my comment, was an example of the pricing curve of CD-R services. Note the first paragraph where I say you can get 30-50 made for $2.50 each.)
Again, it still seems cheaper to just get the CDs made as you need them. You pay $125 for each batch (assumming a batch of 50), never have to worry about bad burns, don't have to have someone spend their time "scripting a frontend" or any of that business. Also, you never have to worry about your hardware going bad, or anything really.
. If he's making 30 copies of 20 lectures that's 600 CDs, not 50, so it's more like $4/CD if the equipment costs him $2000.
And furnacecd (and others, I assume) will make cd-r batches as small as ONE cd-r for $2.50 each, with the price dropping the more you make. If your way gets the price down to $4 a CD, it's still cheaper to use a service- $2.50 each at the most. Of course, over several years, using your own equipment will become cheaper- but that's not including time for maintenence, replacing hardware if it becomes needed, setup and actually doing the work.
It also means an investment of hardware and capitol for something they might decide wasn't the best way of distributing the lectures in the first place. If, after one $125 outlay through a service, they realized that the students didn't even use the CDs, they could just not make another batch. No $2000 and all the time wasted.
I'd recommend getting the first batch made through a service for this reason even if they plan to build the equipment. That way they can see if the students even want this. I can easily see the professor asking for a show of hands "who listened to my lectures on the cd?" and only one or two students raising their hand.
Another thing to consider is the space taken for this equipment, and the hassle of requisitioning the hardware. I have worked in the University environment, and in my experience you can do small funding outlays (under $500) with little or no problem... But have to do proposals and seek bids for more expensive items.
Incidentally, I agree with others on here that the best way to distribute lectures is via the web- why even bother making CDs in the first place? Just let them download them, or listen in the library/their home pc.
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:2, Insightful)
Everything2 isn't a discussion/news site, though. It's more like a non-strictly-factual dictionary or encyclopedia. (I also find the site to be pretty useless, but that's another story.)
Whats the point of having a reply if it doesn't address points covered in the parent?
The point is to stop someone else from spreading untrue crap. Whether it's through responding to them (and hoping your response gets read), or having them change their original comment, it still accomplishes that goal. It's quite likely the reply would get moderated down to -1, so no one would have to actually read it once it's accomplished its purpose.
And that's exactly what editable comments would result in - more untrue crap. How can allowing people to change what they said "keep people from spreading untrue crap"? If anything, altering the record of what was said, when, reduces the veracity of a thread, not increases it. One would imagine that if someone said something honestly, from their heart, they wouldn't HAVE to edit it, except for spelling errors. The people who will are ones trying to change the flow of discourse, or make others look badly/themselves look good.
It seems to me that if you make a statement, you should stand by it, or recant/correct it- NOT delete your original statement and all record of it, then replace it with something else. Which is what an editable comments system would allow for.
The bottom line is, in a threaded/nested view, it would just be frustrating to try and read something like that. I like reading the comments in close to chronological order, and if comments at the top were ACTUALLY more recent then what are ostensibly supposed to be responses to the top comments, it seems like it'd be headache inducing.
I can also see it encouraging people to "frist post" some nonsense, just so they can copy and paste from later, more popular posts. Their frist post is higher up, so it will get read more.
Now, if they TOTALLY changed the comments system, maybe. But wouldn't that be a totally different website? And this comment system works relatively well. I have no problems understanding it and finding info I want while filter out the garbage. If it was made to be really complicated, I don't think it would be that much better...
And really, I don't see how it's that hard to post a correction reply to one of your comments if you realize you made a mistake. Isn't that easier than devising some new comments system?
The only way this would work is if you got rid of the karma system (among other things), because it's too easy to use editable comments to artificially lower someone else's karma.
It also seems you have a lot of faith in users to change their comments if they are wrong. I think this is unlikely. I'd bet most people who comment don't even go back and read the responses to them (though the new message options may be changing this). I also doubt most users would change their comment if proved wrong. More likely, they'll just change there comments to make themselves look smarter/anyone responding to them look stupid.
I also feel there is value in a thread where:
1. I post a unfounded opinion.
2. You refute it.
3. I add an arguement to my opinion, perhaps with a fact.
4. You post more well-founded facts than my facts.
5. Someone else verifies those facts.
6. I either stop responding, or, in an ideal world, agree that I was wrong.
With editable comments, you'd end up with:
1. My edited, opinion with verified facts.
2. You refute an opinion which no longer appears in the parent.
3. I edit this comment to mention that's already stated in my first comment.
4. You post more well-founded facts than my facts, but they are now present in my parent comment.
5. Someone else verifies those facts, but this verification is now present in the parent comment.
That just seems confusing to me, and hard to read. What's the reason for having the responses beyond my edited comment, since I summed them up and claimed the other people's opinions as my own? You could just have them fall off, but then you open up an avenue for people to delete/hide actually good and useful comments.
You could say it doesn't matter, since all the salient points are inside the parent (even though the good points are not my own), BUT- part of a site like this is finding people who's opinion you trust. The karma system tries to do this, as does the friend/foe system. If people can change their comments, absorbing the best comments of others, it seems like you can no longer really tell who is insightful and trustworthy. The people who post earlier and can copy/paste well instead seem to have the best opinions... Which would then lead to the people who's opinions were usurped responding "hey you just stole that comment from me!" and so forth...
Again, this is what I would love about it. If someone presented a single coherent post incorporating all the others, I'd much rather read that then a 15 post reply chain arguing the point.
You seem to have a lot of faith in the userbase. In an ideal world everyone will act nice and simply try to present the facts in the best manner. But in reality, there are trolls. And trolls will try to find ways to use any system to annoy other people and make slashdot (or any site) hard to read and less fun for others.
And besides, isn't that what happens when posts are archived? The threading is removed and all the garbage posts are stripped out? Or when you view a post at +4/+5?
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:1)
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:1)
Now, if they TOTALLY changed the comments system, maybe. But wouldn't that be a totally different website?
I guess that's what it comes down to. I totally think editable comments would be possible, and in some respects it would be preferable (at least for me). But so many other things would change and evolve, that the site really wouldn't be "slashdot" any more. It's unfortunate that slashdot and its users don't fully embrace open content, or someone could just try it and see.
And this comment system works relatively well.
Fairly well. Better than any other news comment system I know of. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be improved.
And really, I don't see how it's that hard to post a correction reply to one of your comments if you realize you made a mistake. Isn't that easier than devising some new comments system?
It is, somewhat, but it also leads to people making circular arguments.
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:1)
It seems overly complicated to me. What's wrong with just responding to your own post with a correction? Simple, easy.
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:1)
See, that's the the thing- I think your system would be more circular. Because you could go back and add things into the debate at an earlier point- which then changes the percieved meaning of comments further along the chain, whose authors then feel the need to alter their words, which makes the original author change his, which then makes the responders change theirs... and so on and so on, ad infinitum.
I think your system would maybe work if, say, each user was allowed to only post once in a story and the posts weren't threaded, they were simply listed by order of moderation (or perhaps chronologically, or another arbitrary order, but not threaded - so you couldn't respond to a response).
If the whole experience of the website was for people to fine tune their comments until they reached the perfect summation of their (and others) views. But as you say, it wouldn't really be slashdot anymore. It sounds like a interesting site idea, but better suited, I think, for philosophical debate than "news for nerds".
Re:RAM Disk, not Hard Drives (Score:1)
Why not add a memory hole button while you are at it?
Was it eurasia or eastasia? I never can remember.
The only way to do this (if indeed it needs to be done) would be to allow editing of a post only if no-one has replied to it, and for a marker to be placed on the post that it has changed. Or you could just use the preview button.
[OT] comment editing (Score:1)
Even better -- why not disallow comment editing if the post has already been either (a) moderated, or (b) replied to? And disallow commenting or moderating a comment while it's marked "edit in progress"? (Bound the latter state by a fairly short timeout -- say, 1 or 2 minutes -- and if the timeout is exceeded, convert the edit to a followup.)
There are race conditions, but those too can be solved. A reply that was started relative to the original (while a parallel edit gets made) would get attached to the original, not the edited version. (The window in which this could happen should be fairly small, since once you click on "Edit Post", it should block replies.) Once the edited version is committed, the original and any followups that arrived in the short editing window are buried behind a "[See original (%d followups)]" link.
Moderations applied to a comment that gets edited while it's being edited remain attached to the original. Again, the window here is small -- if the post is marked as "edit in progress" when the mod points are being applied, the moderation can instead just be dropped and ignored. The timing windows only arise due to concurrency issues when you have multiple servers and stuff.
--JoeRAM prices started going up... (Score:1)
Re:RAM prices started going up... (Score:1)
4X SCSI are you in the stone age or what? (Score:1)
As for the original poster, just get two 20 speed IDEs with the no burn feature and plenty of RAM and you can easily crank out 500 a week just popping in disks whenever you happen to have the time. And I don't know about your neighborhood, but these folks saying it's ONLY two bucks for a "pro" service are insane. I've seen discs that come back from these places on orders of over ten thousand and guess what, they use CDRs too, duh! They may be silver, but you can look at the disk and clearly see they're burnt, not stamped. Silver CDRs are old hat. You can get red and purple and orange ones too. There's no way I pay more than 15Cents for silver blanks in quantities of 100 and I've had zero coasters in the last two years in which I've burnt at least three thousand CDs. Two bucks! What, are you some kinda wise guy? Get the fuck outta here. Anybody who would write that clearly doesn't no shit about running a small time media operation. Yeah, so this guy said cost isn't the biggest concern, so that means he should throw away the money to sharks who will do the "intensive labor" of swappping CDs for ten or twenty times the price of the media? Give me a break. And silkscreening, try a sticker for an exra penny a piece for a grand total of 16Cents for a product that looks identical to a "pro" job. if you want decent silkscreening from those mofos, they charge you an arm and a leg and I've shopped those suckers many times before I gave up and did it myself.
Now, there's just no reason not to. With any of the new IDE's, if you do happen to have some buffer underrruns it won't matter because all the new IDEs are BURN PROOF. 4X SCSI, jeez check out what's on the market before making a suggestion like that.
Well at a glance.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the bottleneck? (Score:3, Informative)
If a CD holds 660 MB and holds 1 hour of audio, that's a data rate of 11 MB/minute. Burning at 24x, that's 264 MB/minute. Bandwidth of a 64-bit wide PCI bus at 66 MHz is 528 MB/second, some 120 times the requirement of the single CD drive. It would appear that one could burn 10 or 20 CDs at a time at 24x and have plenty of bus bandwidth left over (so long as you were burning in parallel).
I'm not qualified to judge the architectural features which might create other bottlenecks, but neither the hard drive nor the machine bus appear to be a difficulty.
Re:What's the bottleneck? (Score:1)
Plextor Replex Tower (Score:3, Interesting)
Nero can do it (Score:2, Interesting)
I have never used it personally for that, nor do I know the scope of its support.
Umm, depends. (Score:3, Insightful)
But here's an unrelated thought. You say these CDs are to contain 30 minute mono lectures. A CD will hold 60 minutes easily. Why not put two lectures per CD and save on your overhead in loading and unloading the disks?
You could take it even further by recording one lecture in the left audio channel, and another in the right, to fit four lectures per disk. It might be worth considering.
Re:Umm, depends. (Score:1)
Re:Umm, depends. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Umm, depends. (Score:3, Interesting)
But here's an even better idea. Skip the ramdisk. Instead, create a bunch of named pipes like np1..np10. Then start up a bunch of cdrecord instances, each reading from one of the named pipes. They should all block until they fill their input buffers.
Next, use tee to copy the ISO image from the hard disk into each of the pipes.
That reads the ISO from the disk only once, and so should have the same performance advantages as setting it up in a tremendously large RAM disk (the contents of which might get swapped out anyway.)
Note that the final named pipe was redirected to, rather than named as an argument to tee. That avoids the need to write an extra copy out to /dev/null.
Will it work? You'd have to try it...
Re:Umm, depends. (Score:2, Interesting)
And named pipes, unfortunately, have their own quirks; but generally, if you set up the reading process(es) before the writing process(es), results are gemerally good.
PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll probably be fine with the 10 drives and one HD as long as:
1) You use a ramdisk
2) You make sure each burner has at least 2MB of buffer
With the 2MB buffer, fast scsi, ram disk and DMA you should run into no problems even with 24 or 32 speed burners. You'd be better off, of course, with a faster/wider PCI bus.
Integrate a robotic loading/unloading system, and 24x drives - you'll get 10 cds every two minutes. Your class of fifty can get their CD on the way out the door. It may be more cost effective to get twice as many drives that run at half the speed.
-Adam
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:2, Informative)
as i recall, the sun and sgi workstations have really wide pci busses, which was what people on a recent macslash [macslash.com] thread were debatinng why apple still has a long way to go to dethrone the two big S's in terms of personal rendering stations.
for a home solution, or at a eshop of sorts, an old sparc station or the likes might be out of the question, but if you're going to hack together somthing, just drop an old S motherboard, 10-20 cd burners, and a powersupply into a metal box, and let er' burn.
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:1)
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:1)
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they're new CDwriters, they'll have protection against making coasters, so the penalty for running too many CDwriters, is they'll slow down.
If you're good with metal working tools, you can make a double wide case that can hold 10 drives. Plug a bunch of IDE controller cards into the PCI bus. Note: IDE cables are limited to 18 inches. So you have to do a little design work, before you start cutting metal.
If you're not into metal working, just take a few cheap PC's, max them out with CDwriters and network them with 100base-T ethernet cards. A little glue, and it will be like one big machine. This design can be expanded to hundreds of drives.
I'm assuming student labor, so you won't need a robot disk changer.
Add-in IDE Controllers (Score:2)
Visit StorageForum. We like new people! [storageforum.net]
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:1)
Not to be pedantic or anything, but you can get a 40X [plextor.com] drive for USD $209 [plextorshop.com].
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:2)
The "burnproof" technology makes it so that nothing catastrophic will happen when the PCI bus bandwidth is saturated.
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:1)
Just wanted to mention the fact that Plextor actually recently released a 40x CD-RW drive, info on which can be found here [plextor.com].
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:2, Interesting)
All you need is a SCSI drive and bunch of SCSI CD-R burners @ any speed... They can be cheap... and on a single SCSI you can put upto 16 devices or even more... and this doesnot need any PCI interaction as long as you HDD is also a SCSI 8GB drive...
You can buy a Adaptec 2940 used for about $50 and put all your drives on them...
Been there done that... you can burn as many CDs as you want... If you wanna go all out you should get a D/C (dual channel) SCSI and put yer HDD on one and ALL your CD-ROMS on the other ( this is fer the fools who would say "hey, but
That's all
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:1)
Re:PCI bus is your bottleneck... (Score:1)
Let the students burn... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let the students burn the CDs themselves. Just set up a server (ala napster), tell the students to download the lectures. Then, if the students actually want to burn them to CD, they're free to do so (set upa FAQ, if need be).
Re:Let the students burn... (Score:1)
Re:Let the students burn... (Score:1)
Re:Let the students burn... (Score:1)
um, he's burning audio. I know its a really recent development, but you can find portable CD players. I know i know, its hard to believe that they're even cheaper than those portable mp3 players. I've even heard about people putting CD players in thier cars!
Re:Let the students burn... (Score:1)
Yes this reply is 6 days later. I'm bored.
t.
Hear! Hear! A cost effective solution. (Score:2, Interesting)
If the students really want to learn the material, and they feel that this CD would help them, then they should go to the lab, download an .ISO, put in a CD and burn it, with all of the instructions on a web page with a link to the ISO. They then provide their own media and time to learn, and they learn how to burn CDs too.
I know at my school, we have probably 30 Plextor 16x CD burners in the lab, and I have seen them used once and I am in the lab often.
My advice, save time money and headache by making a nice ISO and a nice webpage and letting the students loose. If they can't follow well written instructions after asking a few questions (or burning a few coasters), then they shouldn't be in college.
Why CDs? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the semester, give each student ONE CD with the entire course on it!
Nowadays, if your student can use a CD, they can play an MP3. And even a 7MB download is doable over a modem connection. (And you might cut that down to perhaps 1 or 2 MB or less by using a codec designed to do voice-only, but you'll probably have to pay for it.)
Re:Why CDs? (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact that creating all of these CDs is difficult suggests that a different approach is probably called for; no matter HOW little is spent on this duplication scheme, the money is probably better spent elsewhere. Work smarter, not harder.
Re:Why CDs? (Score:1)
I actually love doing educational media, I just wish Macromedia would consent to a Linux runtime. It's a serious question I'm asking. What's the hold up? The hold up is nobody has figured out how it's going to be paid for. But the classroom as it exists today is seriously archaic. Schools should be more like big libraries/cafes with lots of media equipment for individually tailored coursework and more on-campus housing and legalized drugs and a whole lot more acceptance of casual sexuality. Profs would still exist, but they'd be like counselors and spend a lot more time having sex with their students and less time trying to hide it. I think everybody will be happier once we get some real reforms going. The parents, hey they can go back to school too!
Is this AhFoo dude fucking around? Well, remember that the original western schools were all about queer older dudes fucking young boys and telling them about the ways of the world and math and how to argue with a lisp. You can dislike it, but you're arguing against the evidence to dispute it. We could do something back to the roots like that, but with a hetero twist! Americanize the Greek tradition with lots of digitized coursework and a true liberal agenda.
And as for legalizing drugs on campuses, well Harvard had to close down when they ran out of beer in the early years. Students wouldn't attend if they weren't buzzed. Makes sense to me. Let's bring the fun back to education. then we can justify having everyone work in education when nano makes all the conventional industries obsolete.
Re:Why CDs? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Why CDs? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why CDs? (Score:1)
Actually for 30 minute lectures why not audio cassettes.
Re:Why CDs? (Score:1)
Don't mean to be a contrarian but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Plenty. Is there a pile of Kenny G. . . (Score:3, Funny)
don't use a RAM disk (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd mod them up if I didn't have to say that RAM disks are a bad idea. If you simply add the RAM to the system, then the OS can cache the data in the most efficient manner possible. As long as you have the RAM to cache the image, the OS shouldn't be reading it from the drive constantly. Using a RAM disk is actually harmful to system performance, because the OS may not be able to cache disk sectors that are frequently needed. Statically allocating the RAM only works if you have more information about disk use than your OS, which you almost certainly do not.
Re:don't use a RAM disk (Score:1)
Re:don't use a RAM disk (Score:2)
The ramdisk and the OS's caches are both living in the same memory store; the cache won't be much faster, if any at all, and that only by the OS maybe having a less complicated way to get at the data. Thus, any improvement gained by duplicating ramdisk virtual sectors in a cache would be marginal. Ideally, the OS shouldn't cache any of it; the entire ramdisk is the freaking cache. The ramdisk idea is smart.
I don't know... (Score:1, Funny)
... but I'd like to burn all existing copies of Windows XP and Office XP, plus all copies of their source code. That'd make a nice bonfire.
Perhaps Bill Gates could be the Guy.
Practical problems. (Score:3, Informative)
One thing you could try instead is to just use a bunch of older P2-300's with IDE burners and stream the audio files from a fast NFS or SMB server. Burning at 8x requires about 1400 KB/sec, so good ole 100base-T could serve 4-5 clients without a hiccup. Throw in 3-4 nics and you could have yourself a burner-cluster for very cheap.
Re:Practical problems. (Score:2)
The only way round this is to have a server class system as the NFS server; assuming you have one of these, it's probably already working as an NFS server and will probably not be available to be dedicated to working as a server for your burner-cluster. If it's not dedicated, you have contention for scarce resources (the PCI bus, CPU, memory, network bandwidth) which will likely result in coasters.
Key points highlighted (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Key points highlighted (Score:2)
agreement with the mp3 encoding idea (Score:1)
HA! How many CDs can you burn? (Score:2, Funny)
IANASP but.. (Score:2)
Nero will burn 10 identical disks at a time. Plextors's 40x burner costs $215. So for about $3,000 you can burn 200 disks an hour. Don't put your ATA raid motherboard/ATA controller carded monster in a case. Pulling 10 disks out of trays stacked in a tower after they have all ejected simultaniously is a pain in the butt.
Re:IANASP but.. (Score:2)
That's what slot-in drives are for.
How many? How about all of them? (Score:2, Funny)
Heck, I'll even show you how it's done. Lemme just grab my sister's Backstreet Boys collection...
More information Needed ... IDE DRIVES? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, if these MUST be in standard CD-audio format, then the answer to the question about how many disks you can burn of 30 minutes of audio in a given time can be calculated by dividing 30 minutes by the speed of the reader (say 15x), and then adding a minute or two for lead-in lead-out, toc, loading, etc. In this case, a 15x drive should be able to burn a 30 min CD in about 3-4 mins. A single drive should be able to turn out around 15-20 an hour.
The poster did say he wanted to do this on the cheap. The bandwidth bottleneck in a PC environment will most likely be the PCI bus. Even with two IDE drives on an IDE chain, you should be able to keep up with the burning at 15x (150MB/min per drive). If I was going to do this on the cheap, I'd get me a used Pentium-II/Celeron class machine, or possibly a higher end pentium machine, get 4 IDE chains in it, and load it up with 6 CDR drives. Total cost should be under $1000, assuming you use linux or freebsd or similar. ($600 for drives, $50 for controller card, $350 for used machine). You may need to add a little for memory expansion, as I think the idea of a Ramdisk (300Megish) would be good, but memory is cheap (512 total MB should be sufficient). If you need more drives, add another machine. If you find that the machine can't keep up with this many, drop one or two and put them on a second machine.
If these are for delivery to students which aren't at the lecture, or for review, perhaps the best thing would be to not focus on bulk duplication, but instead to figure out an on-demand system. What I mean is that if a student WANTS the lecture, then they can visit a computer at a specific location, select the date of the lecture, insert media and wait 5 mins for it to spit it out. That would be *Really* cheap (linux box w/CDR and suitably sized hard drive).
burn-o-rama (Score:2)
I know it's anti-'geek', but... (Score:2, Offtopic)
You will spend less money by having them professionally duped, and you won't have a fucking beast of a computer left sitting there.
"No problem," you say. "I can just dupe CD's for other people." Nope. You're not going to turn a profit for quite a while, and the other houses are sure to have lower prices than you.
Even though you might get your prices lower, as a musician, i'd much rather go with a pro house with DEDICATED equipment than some hack mucking about with a bunch of consumer-level burners and SCSI cards duct-taped into his HP minitower.
(i know, hyperbole, but you get the drift.)
windows (Score:2, Interesting)
Disk Changer (Score:3, Interesting)
For software: (Score:2)
Alternatives to what you want. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, my question is: why spend the money on CD duplicators? I think it's more worthwhile to spend it on a computer station with all necessary drives for all available media that the students use. You can even turn it into a webserver if it has fast internet access. That way, all the lectures will be on this station and the students would only need to go to it and pop in their zip disk, jaz disk, cd-r or even better, a cd-rw, and then be able to copy what lectures they want. So, I think rather than spend your time trying to build the cd-duplicator, spend your time on writing the software/program that is running on the station that will allow the student to easily choose what they want and then instantly hit the "Burn" or "Copy" button and copy it to their media. In my view, this station is a much better use of your time.
Actually, if you wanted to make it a truly killer app, then instead of copying the mp3's and the powerpoint files separately, have them integrated with, say, a macromedia program that the students can run independently (without the need of either a mp3 player or even powerpoint) and it'll automatically play the audio and show the slides cued to the audio (no need for the students to guess which slide the prof is on).
But then again, I could be totally offtopic and your reasons behind building this cd-copying system far outweighs my suggestion. Anyway, these are just my thoughts.
CD Tower and Nero (Score:2, Informative)
Keith
multi CDRs (Score:2, Insightful)
Use caution when burning CD's (Score:3, Funny)
My workstation / CD duper (Score:1)
You don't need nearly that much power to do the same thing, though. Before I upgraded to an Athlon, I ran a P3-500 system feeding the same 4 writers with an Initio UW SCSI card and a much slower UW SCSI hard disk. It was still solid enough to ignore and continue doing whatever other tasks you have to do while it writes 4 CD-Rs. CPU utilization was less than 4% on the 500 and about 1% on the Athlon.
Linux, SCSI and lots of RAM are key here.
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