1985 news story on the debut of CDs

[edro]

I remember having a Discman that would skip every time you moved it or the car hit a bump in the road.

When ESP came out, it was amazing!

 

[tcsenter]

I still have a working USB zip drive. It's not plugged into anything though.

I may actually still have a parallel port and an IDE/ATAPI Zip Drives around here. Or I might have tossed them five or six years ago, can't remember for sure. I used to have an IDE/ATAPI LS-120 SuperDrive but I definitely remember tossing that.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Like the early "tall box" Playstation games?

Nothing screamed more 90s videogames than that. I do very much miss large PC game boxes. So much nostalgia, even though I didn't jump into PC gaming until 2005 when small boxes became the norm. I am happy to say I do have a few old PC big boxes like the original Age of Empires and even Simcity 2000 that I collected from when I used to work at a used bookstore that sold other types of media too.

 

[Auric]

I remember when CD's used to come in those tall cardboard boxes.

Which made them half the size of LP and thus conveniently fit existing store shelves.

 

[BoberFett]

I may actually still have a parallel port and an IDE/ATAPI Zip Drives around here. Or I might have tossed them five or six years ago, can't remember for sure. I used to have an IDE/ATAPI LS-120 SuperDrive but I definitely remember tossing that.

Click of deeeeeeeeaaaath!!!

The Zip 100 was amazing for its time. The LS-120 never took off, but it seemed like everyone had Zip drives at one point. I sure remember mine fondly. Gawd parallel was slow though.

 

[mmntech]

I had a SCSI Zip drive at one point. Think it got chucked out though. After I got a CD burner, I used to author CD-RWs in UDF. It was slow but that 650MB of storage was sexy in the early 'aughts. DVD-RAM discs were handy too before 4GB+ flash sticks got cheap.

 

[Auric]

You can relive the experience with BD-RE 100GB.

 

[Crono]

The audio equipment looks less dated in that video than the computers in the background. Testament to how much computers have advanced in that same period of time, I suppose.

I like the song they chose for the first part, "Running Up That Hill". Still feels fresh with bands like the Chromatics doing their own covers/versions of Kate Bush's song a few years ago. Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture being the demo track for CD sales doesn't surprise me, though. Great, powerful piece, and recognizable by most people even if they don't know it by name (almost always selected for things like fireworks accompaniment. My favorite composer.

 

[mmntech]

You can relive the experience with BD-RE 100GB.

Except the discs are still like $17 a pop and are only 50GB. That's a cost of $348 per terabyte. Where as a 1TB external USB 3.0 hard drive is $70, and is faster. It's no wonder Blu-ray never caught on for PC storage.

 

[Auric]

100GB are $10 each in quantity of five.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=BD-RE+XL

Yeah, it's slow and not really cheap but it is device independent and subject to different hazards so good for redundant backup.

Or in this case (as posted elsewhere), for cold storage:
http://arstechnica.com/information-...lu-ray-discs-are-perfect-for-the-data-center/

"...this is one of those areas where really high-capacity Blu-ray discs are in relatively low demand on the consumer side and in relatively high demand on the data center side."

Also, from 650MB in 1990 up to 1TB "'soon":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_Disc

 

[pete6032]

How the heck did they get away with advertising CD players in baja racers? I imagine there was no anti-skip protection back in those days, which would make driving down a bumpy road impossible to listen to discs.

 

[John Connor]

I lived in an era where I used records, cassette tapes and CDs. Pretty interesting when you think about it. Never had a portable CD player until circa '94 though.

 

[John Connor]

How the heck did they get away with advertising CD players in baja racers? I imagine there was no anti-skip protection back in those days, which would make driving down a bumpy road impossible to listen to discs.

That's what I was thinking. I remember they sold special boxes for your portable CD player to prevent skipping. My CD player has built in buffering or something and you can shake the hell out if it and won't skip.

I made so many MP3 CD's. LOL

 

[MongGrel]

I may actually still have a parallel port and an IDE/ATAPI Zip Drives around here. Or I might have tossed them five or six years ago, can't remember for sure. I used to have an IDE/ATAPI LS-120 SuperDrive but I definitely remember tossing that.

I talked the owner of the place I was working at in the mid 90's into buying a parallel port Zip Drive.

As many thunderstorms as we have down here it probably saved a lot of programming at least one time when a lightning strike took an old 286 and a few cards on the CNC machines out.

Sold him my old Packard Bell 386 after that too

At least I kept things running.

 

[KentState]

You know that CDs have gone their course when cars are now not even including players in favor of USB drives or streaming only.

 

[mmntech]

100GB are $10 each in quantity of five.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=BD-RE+XL

Yeah, it's slow and not really cheap but it is device independent and subject to different hazards so good for redundant backup.

Or in this case (as posted elsewhere), for cold storage:
http://arstechnica.com/information-...lu-ray-discs-are-perfect-for-the-data-center/

"...this is one of those areas where really high-capacity Blu-ray discs are in relatively low demand on the consumer side and in relatively high demand on the data center side."

Also, from 650MB in 1990 up to 1TB "'soon":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_Disc

Yeah, I can see them being popular in the television industry for long term storage of in-house programming. Cheaper than solid state storage, and doesn't clutter up the servers.

What ever happened to Holographic Versatile Discs. Last I heard, it was planned to be the successor to Blu-ray, with up to 6TB capacity. Had some big names behind it too like Oracle and FujiFilm.