Fortunately, SCSI comes to the rescue. Unfortunately SCSI CD-ROM drives cost two to three times what IDE drives cost. Each SCSI controller can have up to 7 CD-ROMS and each box can have several SCSI controllers. Still not enough? There's ways around those limitations. Out of drive letters for more CD-ROMS? There is software that will mount CD-ROMs as subdirectories - or just use a CD-ROM server which can mount them all as subdirectories.

So here are the approaches, in order of rising capacity (and cost).

• Find a computer or your network that has one hard disk, one CD-ROM drive and two empty 5" drive bays (not as easy as it once was). You can add two CD-ROMs to this computer.
• Put a SCSI controller in one of your servers and slide a tower cabinet full of CD-ROM drives up to it. Assign a drive letter to each of up to 7 CD-ROM drives.
• Have Automation Access build up a Linux/Samba CD-ROM server to your specifications. It just plugs into your network, and any number of CD-ROMs (from 1 to 24), can be mounted on a single drive letter.
• Jukeboxes. Up to hundreds of CD-ROMs, but much greater delay since disks will often have to be fetched and put into a drive. Costly because of all the mechanical stuff involved.