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Roger Bell wrote:
> I agree about CDs. Current convention is not CD-ROM, except
> when referring
> to the CD-ROM drive, although one company I worked for in the
> past insisted
> on using CD-ROM for the media. I believe CD-ROM drives were
> earlier called
> optical drives and sometime still run across that usage.
I seem to recall ads for optical drives that were completely seperate
entities - as in, you could get rewritable optical disks. As far as I can
remember, they were made by a number of different manufacturers (LaCie
springs to mind), and usually involved proprietary disks. Basically
precursors of the Zip drive.
I would use CD to refer to the media, and CD-ROM to refer to the drive
itself. Now that the line between 'audio-only' CDs and data CDs has been
blurred by the increasing presence of CD burners and combination music/data
CDs, it doesn't (IMHO) make much sense any more to insist on a strict usage
of CD-ROM to refer to the media.
Of course, since CD-ROMs are technically CD-WORMs (Write Once, Read Many),
it's all a bit academic... ;)
Cheers
Jack Elder
____
Jack Elder jack -at- gtl -dot- com
Technical Author
Geneva Technology Ltd http://www.gtl.com
