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Previous articles in CD-ROM Professional have outlined the nature of these benchmark tests. These tests use the same CPU, a 286 class computer operating at 16MHz, without a math co-processor and a "plain vanilla" config.sys and autoexec.bat. Generally, the drives are tested with the same device driver supplied in the majority of the tests by Trantor Systems. However, some of the drives tested to date have device drivers supplied by the company who supplies the CD-ROM drive. These include the tests done on the Sony Hitachi, Philips and Mitsumi drives, all of which have proprietary interface cards and device drivers. All the previous tests have used the Microsoft Extensions version 2.1 and not the newer version 2.2.
Generally speaking, these tests to date have focused on the hardware performance of the drive. They do not focus on other significant variables that impact the performance of the drive such as device drivers and caching on the interface cards (as opposed to caching on the CD-ROM drive itself).
This set of tests concludes this protocol. Future articles in this series will continue to benchmark CD-ROM drives but with a newer focus on multimedia considerations.
TEXEL DM 3021
The Texel DM 3021 is the second generation CD-ROM drive from Texel America, Inc. Texel has two basic versions of their CD-ROM drives. The first is a linear motor system which utilizes similar motor circuitry to other CD-ROM drive manufacturers. The second version of their CD-ROM drives has a unique motor which is a lead screw. The drive has a "rugged" manufacture for field usage. This test was conducted on the second generation linear motor system which replaces their DM 3020 model.
The unit tested was a typical internal unit as shipped from the plant in Sunnyvale, California. It has the same...