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A couple of spare optical drives

hunterjwizzard

hunterjwizzard

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Mar 20, 2020
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Going through my collection of spare optical drives and thought I'd share:

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I love optical drives.
 
More than I have. I tend to snag a small stack and eventually need them to replace a defective one.

Supplies will eventually run out since new machines are ditching the drives or using laptop varieties.
 
Unknown_K said:
Supplies will eventually run out since new machines are ditching the drives or using laptop varieties.
Click to expand...
No, brand new optical drives in the SATA variety are still being actively manufactured for a variety of niche roles. You don't find a pre-fab PC with an optical drive at costco, but the technology isn't going away soon.

For me, I have a weird obsession with collecting as many DVDrom drives as I can get my hands on. I don't know why but I like dedicated readers better than read/writers.
 
Ah yes the fabled 52Xmax company...they were everywhere wonder what happend to them
 
Zare said:
Ah yes the fabled 52Xmax company...they were everywhere wonder what happend to them
Click to expand...
They went on to 56x.

Kinda surprised I only saved the one of those. Ah well. Eventually I'll find a project where I want a single very fast CDrom only.
 
I never understood why mass-storage peripherals weren't color-coded. Say, blue for CD, green for DVD, yellow for floppy, etc. Why the need for monochrome boxes?
 
Because for the longest time computers were meant to be in offices and Crayola crayon colors would have been frowned upon there.
 
About 80% are some flavor of IDE. I tend to use more SATA drives than IDE because I have more SATA systems. I only own 1 internal SCSI drive :cry:

I'm not sure how many of the IDE drives are also ATAPI. I know long ago I trashed most of the older ones but I'm relatively sure I still have one 8x drive.
 
I really wish I'd saved a few of those sound blaster-branded CDrom drives. But there was a time when I tried to purge all my slowest gear because I was dumb.
 
I like Creative and Reveal branded drives because they remind me of the time when optical drives were new and exciting.

It's kind of funny thinking back when multimedia kits were a billion-dollar industry and now sound cards, and optical drives are almost extinct.

IDE opticals are getting harder to find in decent working condition. Every time a local guy grabs a truckload of e-waste (every few years) I end up snagging a bunch of opticals from him for free plus whatever else looks interesting.

Since the faceplates are all different, I even saved a few from dead drives in case I run into a working model with imperfections.
 
I distantly recall desperately wanting a CDrom drive in the 90s and being told it was $100 for a 4x. Ah the memories.
 
I recall spending $1100 for a CDR burner (2X writing speed).

In the 90's there were different prices for a retail boxed CDROM you picked up at BestBuy and an OEM bare model you mail ordered or purchased from a computer show (much cheaper). The Mitsumi, Sony, and Panasonic drives that connected to your sound card were also cheaper than a standalone SCSI or PATA model.
 
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