The World's Fastest CD-ROM: Kenwood True-X 72x
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
TheSteelRodent
I once had a Pioneer 12/24x slot-loading drive that, despite not being nearly this fast, was rather terrifying in its own way. It quite often didn't bother to spin down the discs for a long time after they were last accessed and it generally failed to stop discs before ejecting them, so it happened frequently that the discs would pop out and sit in the slot still spinning (till the friction stopped them. That drive was overall not very good and struggled to read a lot of discs that were perfectly fine, but ultimately I got rid of it because it was ATAPI and terrible for ripping CDs - because ATAPI causes pop and noise because the ATA controller can only read from/write to one disk at a time, and whenever it disconnects the CD drive to write to the harddrive you get an audible pop in the file. I swapped my CD drives for Plextor SCSI drives just for that (because SCSI controllers don't disconnect drives, because back then I ripped every CD I bought and the SCSI drives did it perfectly every time
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I once had a Pioneer 12/24x slot-loading drive that, despite not being nearly this fast, was rather terrifying in its own way. It quite often didn't bother to spin down the discs for a long time after they were last accessed and it generally failed to stop discs before ejecting them, so it happened frequently that the discs would pop out and sit in the slot still spinning (till the friction stopped them. That drive was overall not very good and struggled to read a lot of discs that were perfectly fine, but ultimately I got rid of it because it was ATAPI and terrible for ripping CDs - because ATAPI causes pop and noise because the ATA controller can only read from/write to one disk at a time, and whenever it disconnects the CD drive to write to the harddrive you get an audible pop in the file. I swapped my CD drives for Plextor SCSI drives just for that (because SCSI controllers don't disconnect drives, because back then I ripped every CD I bought and the SCSI drives did it perfectly every time
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Chris
6: 19 - All this thing needs is a ZIP drive in the vacant third slot to complete the Holy Quadrilogy of Legacy Drives! :D
I had to use a CD-ROM drive the other day, and for the first time in over a year, I had a rotating mechanical device in my computer! I felt a bit dirty using it, and I instantly recognised the sound of a high-speed optical drive. But my memory had forgotten all about how fusking long it takes to get anything off a CD-ROM! I sat there FOR EVER. :P
This from a man who used to load from cassette tape at 1KB/minute (A massive 17 bytes per second) and had to sit there watching the program load so i could rewind the tape a little if a line checksum failed. Bad times. Shitty old, bad times!
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6: 19 - All this thing needs is a ZIP drive in the vacant third slot to complete the Holy Quadrilogy of Legacy Drives! :D
I had to use a CD-ROM drive the other day, and for the first time in over a year, I had a rotating mechanical device in my computer! I felt a bit dirty using it, and I instantly recognised the sound of a high-speed optical drive. But my memory had forgotten all about how fusking long it takes to get anything off a CD-ROM! I sat there FOR EVER. :P
This from a man who used to load from cassette tape at 1KB/minute (A massive 17 bytes per second) and had to sit there watching the program load so i could rewind the tape a little if a line checksum failed. Bad times. Shitty old, bad times!
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fanjoy
So basically they -cheated- and instead of just spinning the drive faster (which really from what I read, and you showed, cannot really be done because the disc would shatter from flexing at speeds beyond about the 11, 000 RPM range) they instead added multiple lasers so that multiple parts of the disc could be read at once.
Just thinking back to 20 years ago when CD burners (like 52x burners) went for as low as $20-25 after mail in rebates on cheap branded ones (that worked as far as I could tell, just as well as the high-end ones like Plextor and Samsung. But of course high-speed Internet along with flash memory sort of killed off the CD-ROM (and for that matter, DVDs.
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So basically they -cheated- and instead of just spinning the drive faster (which really from what I read, and you showed, cannot really be done because the disc would shatter from flexing at speeds beyond about the 11, 000 RPM range) they instead added multiple lasers so that multiple parts of the disc could be read at once.
Just thinking back to 20 years ago when CD burners (like 52x burners) went for as low as $20-25 after mail in rebates on cheap branded ones (that worked as far as I could tell, just as well as the high-end ones like Plextor and Samsung. But of course high-speed Internet along with flash memory sort of killed off the CD-ROM (and for that matter, DVDs.
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triularity
Back in the day, I had an idea for a -much- faster CD drive. Instead of trying to spin the disc faster, flip it and keep the disc still on top of a window where the laser is spun (possibly in a vacuum chamber to avoid air drag) with something which could remain stable at that speed (e. g. 100x. But not to longer after that, they started coming out with conventional faster drives, so it seemed moot. And that I had felt like going through all the effort of finding an existing manufacture that would even have considered my idea (which I couldn't even be sure was technically feasible/cost effective at the time.
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Back in the day, I had an idea for a -much- faster CD drive. Instead of trying to spin the disc faster, flip it and keep the disc still on top of a window where the laser is spun (possibly in a vacuum chamber to avoid air drag) with something which could remain stable at that speed (e. g. 100x. But not to longer after that, they started coming out with conventional faster drives, so it seemed moot. And that I had felt like going through all the effort of finding an existing manufacture that would even have considered my idea (which I couldn't even be sure was technically feasible/cost effective at the time.
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Tumas
oh god I remember the dark ages of cd roms. One thing to note about Blizzard CDs, they sucked! I myself and multiple friends would have trouble where if a blizzard cd even had the most minor of scratches on it there was a very good chance the disc would not read at all. I think I remember reading my star craft disk for example in 3-4 cdrom drives until I found one with buffer underrun protection that was able to copy the ISO. Then I burned my own copy of the blizzard disk and kept it stored with my original disk and case that had the cd key with it.
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oh god I remember the dark ages of cd roms. One thing to note about Blizzard CDs, they sucked! I myself and multiple friends would have trouble where if a blizzard cd even had the most minor of scratches on it there was a very good chance the disc would not read at all. I think I remember reading my star craft disk for example in 3-4 cdrom drives until I found one with buffer underrun protection that was able to copy the ISO. Then I burned my own copy of the blizzard disk and kept it stored with my original disk and case that had the cd key with it.
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kain
8: 24 i honestly miss that noise.
.
back when i was a kid. i figured it was 100% safe. otherwise how could they sell it?
and after watching that myth-busters episode. i angled my PC away from my nuttz.
.
but ya. now days, trying to find a decent CD/DVD player is like trying to find a new GPU for MSRP. aka. IMPOSSIBLE!
.
ive used old SATA drives in place of buying a new drive. as the old ones from 2005 are faster, quieter, more rugged and reliable. ETC
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8: 24 i honestly miss that noise.
.
back when i was a kid. i figured it was 100% safe. otherwise how could they sell it?
and after watching that myth-busters episode. i angled my PC away from my nuttz.
.
but ya. now days, trying to find a decent CD/DVD player is like trying to find a new GPU for MSRP. aka. IMPOSSIBLE!
.
ive used old SATA drives in place of buying a new drive. as the old ones from 2005 are faster, quieter, more rugged and reliable. ETC
reply
itsmezed
Back when I worked retail, I remember a customer coming into replace the CD drive (which was a 52 or 56x) in their PC. The reason was a CD 'exploded' while in the drive, actually denting the metal housing in a bunch of spots. My guess is that the disc was imbalnced for some reason, which caused it to wobble _violently_ at an absurd RPM rate until the plastic gave out. One of the strangest things I've ever seen with an optical drive, and what makes me miss that Kenwood drive.
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Back when I worked retail, I remember a customer coming into replace the CD drive (which was a 52 or 56x) in their PC. The reason was a CD 'exploded' while in the drive, actually denting the metal housing in a bunch of spots. My guess is that the disc was imbalnced for some reason, which caused it to wobble _violently_ at an absurd RPM rate until the plastic gave out. One of the strangest things I've ever seen with an optical drive, and what makes me miss that Kenwood drive.
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Big
I once had a 56 speed drive absolutely obliterate one of my Diablo 2 CDs. It spun up just like at 8: 25, stayed at full speed for about 5 seconds then I heard what sounded like a. 22 being shot. I jumped so high dude. I ripped out the power cord cause I thought it was something electrical. Upon further inspection, the metal casing on the drive was bent and small fragments of CD littered the inside of the tower. I still only have the -Play- and -Cinematics- discs in that box lol.
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I once had a 56 speed drive absolutely obliterate one of my Diablo 2 CDs. It spun up just like at 8: 25, stayed at full speed for about 5 seconds then I heard what sounded like a. 22 being shot. I jumped so high dude. I ripped out the power cord cause I thought it was something electrical. Upon further inspection, the metal casing on the drive was bent and small fragments of CD littered the inside of the tower. I still only have the -Play- and -Cinematics- discs in that box lol.
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BlendPiNexus
man, i love watching your vids. you've introduced me to the world of old hardware in a way that get's my mind running. i've got some ide drives from a computer that i had gutted and i found a pretty little gem, an internal zip 100 drive that i believe came out of an apple computer. there is also the floppy drive and i believe the optical drive was dvd. i'll have to go looking through my boxes to find it but man that was cool to have found and even know about
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man, i love watching your vids. you've introduced me to the world of old hardware in a way that get's my mind running. i've got some ide drives from a computer that i had gutted and i found a pretty little gem, an internal zip 100 drive that i believe came out of an apple computer. there is also the floppy drive and i believe the optical drive was dvd. i'll have to go looking through my boxes to find it but man that was cool to have found and even know about
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Fire
I built a computer back in 2002 when I was in the military, I used a Mad Dog 56x CD-Rom. I got it from a old website called -Tiger Direct-. Not sure if they are still around. Its been a long time!
I used it for almost a year, then one day, one of my CDs exploded inside the drive and blew the front door off the drive. Pieces of disc flew all around the room.
The drive never worked anymore after that.
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I built a computer back in 2002 when I was in the military, I used a Mad Dog 56x CD-Rom. I got it from a old website called -Tiger Direct-. Not sure if they are still around. Its been a long time!
I used it for almost a year, then one day, one of my CDs exploded inside the drive and blew the front door off the drive. Pieces of disc flew all around the room.
The drive never worked anymore after that.
reply
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