How to put more than 20 CDROM disks on line when you only have 26 drive 
letters under DOS... 

Since I haven't seen the solution anywhere despite quite a number of inquiries 
and since numerous Tech Support departments couldn't help, here goes.  

Problem:  Since each CDROM disks consumes a drive letter, and since most 
people remap local drives to other drive letters, when you get above about 12-
15 CDROM disks on line you start wishing DOS supported more than 26 drive 
letters. 

There are 2 solutions.  The first are programs that support the XDISC Pioneer 
program for Pioneer minichangers.  That is workable, I believe but it requires 
3rd party software use and means the caller must exit via a door losing the 
familiar PCBoard interface.  It also means PCBoards lose ROBOCOMM 
compatibility for disks accessed in this manner.  Also this leaves out the 
people who shun the minichangers in favor of individual drives. Still, you'll 
be able to get up to 90 disks on line with 15 drive letters using minchangers. 

Another way is to use a computer as dedicated a CDROM server.  I'm using 
Lantastic.  If you boot from floppies (no hard disk), you'll have 24 available 
drive letters on that computer.  You can on put 4 minchangers for 24 CDROM 
disks or if you prefer standalone 1 disk units, you'll still be able to put 
24 disks on.  You'll use drive letters C: through Z: on that machine. We'll 
call this server \\ROM1. 

On the other computers in the LAN, you log into \\ROM1, then use the command
NET USE Z: \\ROM1
This maps ALL drives in \\ROM1 to Z: on the local machine.  Z:\C through 
Z:\Z become the CDROM disks, each in a subdirectory under the drive letter Z:.
PCBoard's indexing utilities have no trouble indexing these disks this way.
You can put a second CDROM server on line, again with no hard disk and with
24 CDROM disks using a second drive letter, Y:, and a third using X:, etc.  
Using 3 computers as ROM servers, we've mapped in 72 disks using only 3 
network drive letters.

It isn't cheap but there is no longer a 15 or so disk ceiling.  Using your 
original 15 drive letters, you could put 360 CDROM disks on line this way.  If 
this isn't enough, I believe it may be possible to to use a second line of 
computers as CDROM hub's, each serving 24 CDROM servers, getting you up to 
8640 disks in 8640 conferences, again, just using 15 drive letters.  This way, 
each CDROM disk can be in its own conference, no doors are needed, no external 
protocols are used, and the board stays fully PCBoard compiant including 
Robocomm compatibility for all disks.  

Getting back to solution 1, using Xdisk supporting 3rd party programs, it may 
be possible to map each 6 disk minichanger into a drive letter on the server 
allowing up to 24 changers on 1 CDROM server or 144 CDROM disks on 1 CDROM 
server using 1 drive letter on the network.

This file comes from the sysop of The Rose and Crown BBS.  (615) 892-0097 
(public line).  I can be reached there or on RIME at ->RC. 
