DVD-RAM jbox, has there ever been such a thing?

[DiTBho]

Yesterday a friend showed me how she is learning the Russian language.
She has a plastic cartridge which hosts 5 CDs in it and an old CD jbox reader.
She bought a training software, it's composed by 5 CDs, and when the running program asks to "change the CD", the jbox does the job for her.

Forget you have to eject the disk, and replace it. The jbox is a actually "disk changer", so cool! Very cool!

The product name written on plastic is "laser  memory", but, as far as I can see, it's only a reader, it cannot burn disks.

DVD-RAM are amazing, they offer 4GByte and can operate like a r/w device.
A jbox would be even more amazing, but ... has there ever been such a thing?


If so, any "magic keyword" I can search on Google? 

[DiTBho]

Little detail, the "laser memory" unit has has a label on the back.

It says "made in Russia", so it's a genuine piece of Soviet technology to learn the Russian language, it's ... funny to hear 

Probably it was used for something completely different, probably human body book with illustrated high details pictures, which make sense, since each CD is about 600 MByte of space.

[granzeier]

Never heard of a "jbox" but I have heard of juke boxes (I even have one in my car - from 2000.  )

If you are trying to build something like it, try this. Back when programs came on floppy disks - to install the program on a hard drive I would create an install sub-directory and copy all the files from each floppy disk to that sub-directory and run the install from there. Instead of asking for the next disk, the install program would see that the next files were available and keep on going. Much faster, really.

You may be able to do this, and run the Russian program from the hard drive.

[DiTBho]

Ehehe, the Russian language learning software is smart and it's able to understand if it runs on a CD rather than from a data chunk copied to the hard-drive.

That's how the jbox can help. When the software asks to change the disk, the request is issued to the jbox and it changes the media in a couple of seconds.

I think the only software trick would be cloning the CDroms into file images and to mount the required one through a Virtualizer.

When the software says, please insert CD#n, you click on "unmount CD", then on "mount CD", browse, select, an confirm.

VirtualBox, VirtualPC allow it, but the jbox is much more appealing technology 

[Rasz]

DVD Duplicator

[DiTBho]

DVD Duplicator

A DVD duplicator is a tower in which some units are stacked together under the control of a built-in card. One reads, the others write.

It's not a jbox, and CDs are not handled inside a cartridge but rather individually loaded into units.

The Learning Russian language program wants the CDs loaded from the same unit. So, if you stat the main program on unit D: then it will require you to change the media on the same unit D:

On a DVD duplicator there are two possibilities:

• the built-in card is smart enough to interface its units and present them from the outside as if it were a single unit, but this would require "special" software to manage this functionality since even with a SCSI media changer this kind of operations are not standard and require custom software
• each unit owns a mechanical ID so you can reserve an ID as "service", and manually select the wanted unit on the stack by changing its ID to the reserved one
  
  e.g.
  Note: ID0 is reserved
  
  unit1(ID1)
  unit2(ID2)
  unit3(ID2)
  unit4(ID2)
  
  you want to read from unit2, you manually change ID2, and switch it to ID0
  unit1(ID1)
  unit2(ID0) <--------------- change this ID
  unit3(ID2)
  unit4(ID2)
  
  This solution worked on my old SCSI CD duplicator. I did it several years ago for the company where I worked. Physically the unit-ID was a rotary switch 0..9, or 0..9,A..F, manufactured with the brand "Contaves".
  

[DiTBho]

Talking about jbox CD Changer, the commercial name for the cartridge I was talking about is "CD Cartridge Magazine"

[Benta]

Isn't this exactly the same that the CD changer in the trunk of your car does?

[DiTBho]

Isn't this exactly the same that the CD changer in the trunk of your car does?

Somehow yes, just without the cartridge magazine 

[DiTBho]

p.s.
The wifi in my car uses an iPod as audio source.

[helius]

The general term for storage systems that automatically change disks or tapes is a library. You seem to be asking about an optical disk library. Yes, they exist. A library contains one or more drives, storage slots for media, a robotic arm, and optionally a "flipper" device for dual-sided media.

IBM 3995, IBM 3996
HP Optical Jukebox (2300ux, 3800ux, 7100ux...)
Plasmon library (D120, G164, G238, G438, G638, Gx80, Gx174...)

[DiTBho]

The general term for storage systems that automatically change disks or tapes is a library. You seem to be asking about an optical disk library.

DVD-RAM read/write "library".

[DiTBho]

IBM 3995, IBM 3996
HP Optical Jukebox (2300ux, 3800ux, 7100ux...)
Plasmon library (D120, G164, G238, G438, G638, Gx80, Gx174...)

the IBM 3995 is a magneto-optical MO+WORM library
the HP 2300ux is a "UDO" library

any DVD-RAM?

[helius]

The Plasmon D120 was for DVD-RAM carts. Ultimately, though, you can generally change out the drives and use whatever media you like as they have the same dimensions.

[DiTBho]

The Plasmon D120 was for DVD-RAM carts. Ultimately, though, you can generally change out the drives and use whatever media you like as they have the same dimensions.

Thanks for the tips!

[PlainName]

Somewhere I might still have a 4CD drive. It's a 5.25" device that fits in a normal CD drive mount but takes 4 CDs.