[OT] CD-R Requirements (or Giving Back To Windows Users)

[Bill Moseley <moseley@hank.org>]

This is a rather non-specific question:

Will CD writing quality be effected if the machine is doing other tasks?
Of course the answer is "it depends", but here's what I'm considering:

A few of my Debian machines are old MS Windows hand-me-downs.  I've been
offered another (they just bought a new machine because the old one was
crashing in Windows all the time).  But, this time I want to give it back
with Debian installed.

They are not ready for Linux on the desktop, but said that they would be
willing to have a linux machine they could use for burning CDs.  

I, on the other hand, would rather give them a NAT (masq) and firewall
machine and let them put their XP machine on the protected internal LAN
for all the obvious reasons.  I'd rather do that than add a second NIC to
the XP machine.  Linux is good for this, and frankly, I think this might be
a good way to get Linux into the homes of Windows users that would not
consider Linux otherwise.

Anyway, the machine in question is only a few years old -- A PIII 450Mhz w/
256MB.  The CD-R installed in that machine is a SCSI drive (8x burn speed).

Now, they don't want the NAT machine because of the worry that if the
machine is doing other things (like fetching mail) that it will effect the
quality of CD writing.

So my simple question is:  See any reason this machine can't be both a
NAT/firewall/fetchmail machine and burn CDs without errors?  My guess that
would not be a problem, especially since the drive is SCSI.

They also have a new 48x (sure beats 8x) CD-R IDE on order.  I wonder how
that will work, also.

I'm not looking for any hard answers.  But I don't want to waste my time
building the NAT/firewall if all we end up with is a machine that sits
there ready to burn CDs.  I guess am looking for people that have a similar
setup -- that will help convince my friend that this is a good way to set
up the machine.

Thanks,



-- 
Bill Moseley
mailto:moseley@hank.org