Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom,comp.publish.cdrom.software
Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!sgiblab!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!uwvax!cs.wisc.edu!dross
From: dross@cambizola.cs.wisc.edu (Dan Ross)
Subject: CD Sampler Info; Cross-platform (Mac/MPC) questions
Message-ID: <dross.757708853@cs.wisc.edu>
Sender: news@cs.wisc.edu (The News)
Organization: U of Wisconsin Madison - Computer Sciences
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 18:40:53 GMT
Lines: 47


"The Future Is Now" CD Sampler

Has anyone bought a little cheap CD Sampler called "The Future Is Now"?
It comes in just a little cardboard wallet and says "$5 sampler check
enclosed", and has two versions, "Entertainment" and "Edutainment".  I
got the Entertainment one for about $5.50 at Best Buy (a large chain 
appliance/electronics store).

It features 17 demos of products, some for MPC and some for Mac.  The
package shows no comprehensive list that lists which is for which platform,
and the pictures of a few products on the back are WRONG--"Dracula Unleashed" 
is only for MPC, NOT for Mac.  Furthermore, some of the "demos" amount to
screen dumps without any user interface or guide to accessing them.

The $5 check is good "at any CD-ROM retailer" and appears to be like a coupon,
payable by the First State Bank of Lillian, Minnesota.

Nowhere is it clear who publishes this disc.  It says "Electronic Arts" in
a few places, but the only company I could get from 800 directory assistance
for a company with that name was one that does stuff for the military!

The Space and National Parks demos, and Total Distortion, are kind of neat.
The Ugly Duckling demo has enough to make it a bit entertaining for kids;
it's reminiscent of a color version of the Manhole or other interactive
click-here-and-there and see what happens programs.

Question:  Mac/MPC CD-ROMs

I have SoftPC and was hoping to be able to access the files for MPC or IBM,
and possibly extract image or sound files for use on the Mac.  However,
the CD mounts as an HFS (Macintosh Hierarchical File System) volume which
contains only the Mac demos, and any High Sierra or ISO 9660 tracks then 
are inaccessible through the Finder, and through SoftPC, the CD drive 
gives "Abort, Retry, Fail?" when accessed.  (I have an ISO 9660-only disk 
which mounts properly in the Finder, and is also accessible from DOS 5.0
in SoftPC.)  Anyone know a way to force-mount the ISO 9660 tracks, or to
mount a disk containing different formats?

(I had the same problem when converting Audio CD tracks directly to
digital sound files using QuickTIme and Simple Player--pure CD-Audio 
disks worked fine, but mixed Audio and Data CDs behaved as if they only 
had Data tracks.  However, CD Remote was able to play the audio tracks
fine on mixed-format disks.)

Dan
dross@cs.wisc.edu