[Info-vax] Compatible DVDs

[Heuser]

On 24 Sep., 00:17, John Santos <j... at egh.com> wrote:
> In case anyone has never noticed, the HP web site is
> "Hopelessly Pathetic".
>
> I'm trying to configure a system for a customer (actually,
> we've already done so, the order is ready to go in, just
> trying to cross a few t's.)
>
> Amongst other things, it consists of an rx2660 (VMS, of
> course) and 3 Proliant DL165 PC's (two running Solaris
> X86 and one Linux, for various historical reasons.)
>
> Anyway, all 4 boxes have writable DVD drives, and I'm
> trying to tell the customer what kind of DVD media to
> get, DVD+R, DVD-R, etc., so naturally I want to specify
> something that will work on all 4 drives.
>
> The rx2660 has an AD143A drive and the 3 DL165's have
> 447891-B21 drives.
>
> There appears to be *absolutely no* information on this
> subject on the HP web site.  The closest thing is the
> quick-spec for the rx3600 (different server, but the same
> drive), which says HP-UX (some version) only does DVD+R's,
> but it isn't clear if this is a drive restriction or an
> HP-UX restriction, and if it is an HP-UX restriction, if
> it only applies to some old version of HP-UX or to the
> current version (not being familiar HP-UX version numbering,
> lack of "or later" or "or earlier" or "before version xxx"
> in the note renders it useless.  But if it applies to *all*
> versions of HP-UX, why the hell did they bother to include
> a version number in the note?)
>
> Almost all the links Google found were for places willing
> to sell me the various drives, but none of the ones I checked
> had any technical info; if anything, they just pointed me
> back to the HP site.
>
> The HP links Google found when I added "site:hp.com" either
> pointed to a useless picture of the drive (with all the
> documentation links resulting in "No documentation found"),
> or to sales pages citing prices in British Pounds.  (I'm
> in the USA?!?)  Or to more non-documentation pages at the
> hp sites in either Malaysia or Thailand!?!?!
>
> I finally found something that looked remotely like technical
> docs on the HP site, and it was, but the wrong sort.  It was
> a nice set of pictures and text describing how to install
> the 447891 drive in a PC.  But no links to specs or anything
> actually useful.  (Though the pictures were nicer than those
> in the installation sheet that came with the same drive on
> another system, which I happen to have a copy of.)
>
> This page had a feedback form at the bottom of it, which I
> tried to use, but when I clicked "submit", it came back with
> a page not found.
>
> What a waste of several hours;  I could have driven to MicroCenter,
> bought a bunch of DVD's of each variety, brought them all with
> me to the customer site next month (when the system will get
> installed), and tested them all in each drive to see which
> ones work, cheaper than trying to surf for the info.
>
> The helpful (non-HP?) people who brought us CDRECORD probably
> know just what kind of media work best with the VMS drive,
> but does anyone know for the different (and probably incompatible)
> Proliant drive?
>
> --
> John Santos
> Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.

I'm not aware of any actual DVD-recorder that supports DVD+R(W)
exclusively.

It is a pure software question:

OpenVMS has DVD+R(W)/CD-R(W) support build in since V8.3.
If you want to use all feature of your DVD-burner you can use
cdrecord or DVDwrite. Both are free available. DVDwrite
supports USB-drive, too, that is not available for cdrecord.

Have look at the following site:

www.dvdwrite.de

Hope this helps
Eberhard