Chicago had no sooner recovered from the ALA meeting than it was the site of an even larger gathering-the National Computer Conference. Although numerically the exhibits at NCC were dominated by electrical power protection devices and microcomputer and micro-to- mainframe networking systems, numerous vendors featured optical digital disk, CD-ROM, and videodisc hardware.
Given the number of CD-ROM products demonstrated at ALA, it is interesting to note that most vendors showing CD-ROM drives at NCC were promoting the sale of "evaluation" drives-at prices ranging from $1,500 to $5,000. The vendors, which included Hitachi, Denon, and Philips, spoke in terms of being able to deliver the drives in quantity by the beginning of 1986, at prices of between $400 and $1,000 per drive for quantities of 1,000 or more. Despite the apparent lack of ready availability of CD-ROM drives, at least one library-oriented vendor-the Library Corporation, whose BiblioFile product was described in the previous issue of LSN-is currently delivering drives to its customers.
Toshiba demonstrated a dual purpose drive/player capable of reading audio data from a compact audio disc and digital data from a CD-ROM. The company expects to ship the player in commercial quantities in Spring of 1986.
The NCC exhibits focused on hardware and software; there were few examples of applications using the optical technologies. Grolier showed its Academic Amencan Encyclopedia and an exhibit in the Philips booth demonstrated the ability of the CD-ROM medium to carry a mixture of digitized audio, video and machine-readable data. A spokesperson for Video- tools-a Carlsbad, California company that specializes in multimedia use of the CD-indicated that a dedicated compact disk such as can store 600 MB of character encoded data, can carry up to 34 hours of telephone-quality audio or 5,000 frames of video images. The application also featured the use of Battelle's BASIS software for the formatting, indexing and retrieval of machine-readable data for CD-ROM applications.
Several companies displayed optical digital disk drives for mass storage of computer data. These exhibits were similar to that mounted at ALA by Geac. Of interest to those concerned that this write-once technology is too limited for large scale market penetration, were the several companies which also showed erasable optical digital disks. In most cases these displays consisted of only a sample disk-operational drives for recording and reading the media were not in evidence. All of the vendors queried as to the availability of a fully operational erasable optical disk system admitted that these were not expected before 1987. Even the system being publicized most heavily- the 3.5-inch erasable thermo-magneto-optic disk developed by Verbatim Corporation, a Kodak subsidiary-was being described with a handout headed "Proposed 1987 Specifications."
