perobich@ingr.com sez:

The SGI drives use modified firmware and (AFAIK) are not available elsewhere, but you can get the Apple drives at Circuit City, Sears, etc.

SGI uses modified firmware on their DAT/DDS units to read audio daata, but I am pretty sure the Toshiba mech is stock. Why? I have a program called direct to disk from OMI that lets me load audio data from an Apple CD-SC300 or the Toshiba mech, outputting AIFF, Sound Designer II and several other file formats. The AIFF and SDII formats are stereo 16-bit 44.1kHz; usually the QuickTime formats are 8 bit. So the AIFF and SDII formats have the full bit stream. -- Rusty H. Hodge, Cyberneticist <rustman@netcom.com>