CeBIT 2002 - The Background Info

CD Format - Page 2

Another big issue was the Mt. Rainier format. Yamaha was the first ever manufacturer that introduced Mt. Rainier format for the CRW3200 series. Till now Microsoft has not supported the "Mt. Rainier" format within WinXP or other operating system making things a little harder for the end users. There was a lot of talk about which software was Mt. Rainier ready and which drives are/or not Mt. Rainier v1.1 compatible.

Mitsumi and SAI (Software Architects) claimed that the CR-480ATE and the Write CD-RW! Solution is the only close to the Mt. Rainier v1.1 specification. Yamaha's CRW3200 got a "CeBIT 2002 award" for supporting Mt. Rainier and on the other corner was Philips with the "EasyWrite" format. What's really going on?

It seems that even if the Mt. Rainier is listed as a supported feature from various manufacturers; there are still several issues for their drives. The Mt. Rainier format includes new features such as the background formatting, 2k addressing and of course data defect management. The Mt. Rainier compatible drives must be able to "multi-thread" such tasks, transparent to user.

Philips proposed a new way to certificate Mt. Rainier compliant drives with the "Easy Write" logo. The use of special diagnostic software/test discs will make sure that the drives will fully support the Mt. Rainier format. Philips claimed that their upcoming drives will support the "Easy Write" logo, which means a 100% support of the Mt. Rainier format.

The Mt. Rainier seems to be very important for big vendors like Compaq or HP. We may see those companies eliminating the floppy disc usage in near future, and adopting a fully Mt. Rainier compatible drive. For sure, there will be a big fight between manufacturers that supply OEM drives to those companies. LiteOn had some big contracts with Dell. Till now even their 40x recorder doesn't support Mt. Rainier, despite the fact that it was initially announced. Of course not many manufacturers support Mt. Rainier, but eventually most of them (?) will.