MIL-HDBK-9660 Dod Produced Cd-Rom ProductsThis document was prepared by the Defense information Systems Agency DISA, in cooperation with the services and other activities within the Department of Defense DOD. The goal of this document is to provide information and guidelines to support the creation and interoperability of Compact Disc-Read Only Memory CD-ROM development and use within DOD. This document specifies core compact disc fundamentals for the DOD community. It is strongly recommended all DOD components comply with the fundamentals established within this document. Specialized functions within DOD may require expanded internal guidance to meet their own mission needs. All other Government entities are invited to use this document.

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MIL-HDBK-9660B

also not recommended for 4X and 6X (900 KB per second) recording speeds.

A.5.3  W riting to CD-R.  CD recording is not a simple task to master.  CD-R systems are finicky. CD-R media may be in any of four states:

Blank unrecorded (pre-grooved and time-stamped) Partially recorded

Finalized or Recorded

Multisession

NOTE:  Some older CD hardware/software cannot successfully read multisession CDs.  Unless the producer has determined that all users of the CD product can read multisession discs, it is recommended CDs be produced as single session.

CD-R recorders perform an optimum write power calibration (OPC) when the disc is first spun up.  This calibration is monitored and controlled in a feedback loop during recording using a running OPC strategy.

Every time a CD-R writes something, it makes a "track."  A track can be a song, data file(s), video sequence(s), etc., and must be at least 4 seconds in length, which equates to roughly 700 KB (each second equals 75 blocks, each block equals 2,352 bytes).  The "writing mode" is determined by three things:

1.  The write modes supported by the CD-R drive.

2.  The write modes supported by the premastering software.

3.  The writing mode desired by the user.

A.5.3.1  Tips for writing to CD-R.

1.  Use a double speed (2X) CD-R drive (300 KB per second) for recording.  This offers the best combination of fast and reliable writing.

2.  Buy CD-R media that goes with the recorder.

3.  Get a CD-R drive with a large data buffer so if the data flow is interrupted during recording the session will not be interrupted.

4.  The PC should be at least a 486DX2/66 or equivalent with 8 MB or more of RAM and a hard drive large enough to accommodate DOS, Windows, and the CD-R application (e.g., a quick SCSI hard drive with a throughput of at least 1 MBps).  Rule of thumb:  Use the fastest computer with the most RAM you can find/afford.

5.  Unless the CD-R unit comes with its own hard drive, use a second hard drive (or a partition of a hard drive) for the source material with at least 1 GB in capacity, a seek time of 12 ms or less, a sustained system transfer rate twice that required by the speed of the CD-R, and one that does not perform thermal recalibration (t-cal) over long periods, such as AV-rated (Audio-Visual) SCSI hard drives.

Thermal Recalibration (t-cal) - T-cal is a process that some hard drives use to periodically check and adjust head tracking to compensate for changes in temperature.  When writing large amounts of information, the hard drive pauses to

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