From: jk@tools.de (Juergen Keil)
Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom
Subject: Re: Any info on Sony "Electronic Book"?
Date: 17 Aug 92 17:28:55 GMT
Organization: TooLs GmbH, Bonn, Germany
In-reply-to: jack@admin.mport.COM's message of 13 Aug 92 19:22:31 GMT

In article <858@admin.mport.COM> jack@admin.mport.COM (Jack Craig) writes:

>   i got a brochure from a local sony rep. the unit has a lcd screen
>   on the top and the cdplayer unit is on the bottom half. its market
>   info only, but it does seem to exist. i was actually inquiring about
>   the cd publishing, but i asked to see the unit these media worked with.

Are you sure you're describing the DD-DR1 drive?  Your description sounds more
like that of the DD-1EX (which sony calls the "DATA Discman").  This is indeed
a portable cd-rom reader for 8cm single cds (Electronic Books) with a keyboard
and a 30 columns x 10 lines (256x200 pixel) lcd display. The DATA Discman
contains all the software for accessing the electronic book cds. There are six
different search methods for looking up text or graphics in an electronic
book, you can

  - search with the prefix of a keyword
    (e.g. search for 'experi' in an english dictionary an find the definition
    of experience, experiment, experimental, ...)
  - search with the suffix of a keyword
    (e.g. search for 'ental' in an english dictionary an find experimental,
    fundamental, mental, oriental, ...)
  - search for a paragraph of text that contains up to five given words
    (e.g. search a list of hotels for one offering rooms with: bathroom and
    telephone and tv)
  - search for a paragraph of text that fits up to four different categories;
    known values for each category can be selected from a menu
    (e.g. search a list of cars for one that has: 4 doors, 6 cylinders and
    costs 30 - 40000 DM)
  - search for text using a menu
    (e.g. in a list of cars: by first selecting a car vendor from the
    menu with a list of the vendors (mercedes-benz), then selecting the type
    of the car (mercedes-benz 200) in a submenu and then selecting a particular
    model (mercedes-benz 200 td) in another submenu)
  - follow hypertext links to related information (such a link can point to
    text or to a picture, pictures may also contain hypertext links)

I've seen the DD-1EX and the Electronic Books in several book stores here in
germany.  Up to now there are 10 - 20 EBs available: postcodes, bank codes,
law texts, the bible, but most of them are dictionaries/encyclopedias.

The electronic book cds are sold in a special caddy; an EB looks like a 3.5"
floppy disk (the shutter looks different and the EBs are a bit thicker).
There is a mechanism to open the caddy and take out the cd; by using a single
cd adapter you can use an electronic book cd in a normal cdrom drive.  The cd
is recorded with data mode 2 cd/xa sectors (most pc/mac/... cdroms are
recorded in mode 1).  You need at least a cd rom drive that can read data mode
2 cdrom sectors (e.g. a sony cdu-541), better is a cdrom drive that supports
cd/xa disks (e.g. a nec cdr-83).  The filesystem on the EBs is ISO 9660.
Since the cd contains no programs for accessing the information on it, you have
to write the retrieval software yourself.  I have included an anouncement from
comp.archieves below with a pointer to some public domain sources, but don't
expect too much.

The DD-DR1 seems to be an EB compatible cdrom drive (mode 2, cd/xa) that you
can attach to your computer and which directly accepts the EB caddy. I don't
know if the DD-DR1 accepts full size audio cds/cd-roms.

> From: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)
> Newsgroups: comp.archives
> Subject: [alt.cd-rom] Re: Sony Data Discman DD1-EX
> Message-ID: <km048fINNjb3@agate.berkeley.edu>
> Date: 31 Dec 91 06:41:19 GMT
> Approved: adam@soda.berkeley.edu
> 
> Archive-name: auto/alt.cd-rom/Sony-Data-Discman-DD1-EX
> 
> In article <klvm50INNd4l@agate.berkeley.edu> izumi@pinoko.berkeley.edu writes:
> >If you want to read DD1 Electronic Books with a CD-ROM, you might
> >get some useful information by studying the souces in the following
> >postings in fj.sources.
> >This is a dserver/Electronic Book Dictionary server & clients for
> >some E-books available in Japan.  The server is written for Suns
> >with standard CD-ROM player, but should be portable to most
> >Unix boxes.  
> 
> Thanks for the pointer!  I picked up the sources, tarred them up,
> and put them up for anonymous FTP in
>         nic.cic.net:/pub/netsoftware/dserver-2.0.tar.Z
> that'll save someone a trip to Japan to get them.
> 
> Regretfully my Japanese is it bit worse than my English, so I didn't
> translate the README files or anything else.  I also don't have
> any actual disks to try things out on yet.
> 
> --Ed
> 
> Edward Vielmetti, emv@msen.com

--
Juergen Keil          jk@tools.de ...!{uunet,mcsun}!unido!tools!jk
Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom