ONE Technologies
- 113 -
15.4.2 CD-ROM
It is impossible to imagine today's PC world without the CD-ROM.
The technical foundations are exactly the same as with the Audio-
CD, except that they have been extended by an error-correction
process. Thus computer data may also be reliably processed on a
CD-ROM drive.
15.4.3 ISO 9660
The logical structure of a CD-ROM is established by the ISO
Standard 9660. Right after the publication of the Yellow Book
Standard, the so-called High-Sierra format was developed which
was the forerunner to ISO 9660 and provided its basis.
ISO 9660 describes how data items are to be organized on a CD.
Among these are the rules which limit the number of levels in the
directory structure or the length of the file names. ISO 9660 is
supported by most of today's common operating systems
(Macintosh OS, MS-DOS, Windows, and UNIX). Most CDs
correspond to this standard. It is only in the Macintosh environment
that HFS CDs have established themselves as alternatives to this
standard.
In order for an operating system to read a CD which was created as
defined by with this standard, software is required which can read
ISO 9660 files. For a computer running MS-DOS or Windows 3.x,
the corresponding application is called MSCDEX.EXE. This is a
driver which will ensure that the CD and the CD-ROM drive can
communicate with each other. The driver must be loaded in both the
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS system files separately.
Windows 95 and the Macintosh operating system can both work
with a CD as a standard feature.
ISO 9660 defines a directory structure which is designed from the
outset in such a way that it can be used on as many different
To Next Page
Loading...