VOGONS


Good looking CD / DVD drive

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Reply 20 of 37, by Joakim

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imi wrote on 2021-04-12, 21:50:

Pioneer Slot-In

:p

Aye I had one back then. It was friggin loud as a vacuum cleaner tho. Maybe you could modify it or turn down the speed slightly. But I used it a lot and it read all disks.

Reply 22 of 37, by chrismeyer6

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I loved the cd changer drive we had in our computer when I was a kid. It made playing multi disk games more convenient just load them all in and then just push the right button when the game asked for a different disk.

Reply 24 of 37, by mcyt

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I always liked the Creative logo on the front of the drive door. I always thought it looked expensive, since these drives *were* relatively expensive compared to the white box drives most people were buying at the time they were available (including me).

But personally, I always just bought drives that matched the case. In the early 2000's, I had two silver computers (a Lian-Li PC-7a and a knockoff of the same), and in one of them I put plain black drives (no logos), while the other had silver drives for a silver monochrome look. I ended up selling the Lian-Li all-silver machine but I kept the drives because you don't often see silver optical drives. They're still in my garage. My black drives are still in that same computer, which I still have. I don't really know why I kept the knockoff Lian-Li and not the real one other than laziness; I probably just didn't want to transfer everything over.

If you have a silver case and you want something unusual, Sony and Lite-On made silver drives - those are what I have. There are a couple of others that I've seen but they're uglier. The Sony and Lite-On drives just look like their other drives, but silver.

Reply 25 of 37, by shamino

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Jorpho wrote on 2021-04-14, 21:57:

Wow, I've never seen something like that before! How does it work internally? Are there pictures or videos of the mechanism?

I saw a video about that drive a while back.. I thought it must have been LGR or another really big channel but that didn't come up when I searched.
WaybackTech has one, not sure if that's the one I watched.

Reply 26 of 37, by weedeewee

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Jorpho wrote on 2021-04-14, 21:57:

Wow, I've never seen something like that before! How does it work internally? Are there pictures or videos of the mechanism?

It has a sort-a-like tray? system that holds 4 or 5 cd's that can move up and down depending on which cd should be loaded into the cd reader part.
Similar in style to the old car multi CD system trays that could hold like 8 or 10 cds. those car ones had the tray removable. This multi cd drive has it inside the drive, and depending on which button you select in front, the cd gets loaded/unloaded into that drawer? ledger? dunno how to call it

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Reply 27 of 37, by Jorpho

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weedeewee wrote on 2021-04-15, 19:42:

Similar in style to the old car multi CD system trays that could hold like 8 or 10 cds. those car ones had the tray removable. This multi cd drive has it inside the drive, and depending on which button you select in front, the cd gets loaded/unloaded into that drawer? ledger? dunno how to call it

So, do you have to pull out all five discs at once whenever you want to change one of them?

Reply 28 of 37, by weedeewee

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Jorpho wrote on 2021-04-15, 20:20:
weedeewee wrote on 2021-04-15, 19:42:

Similar in style to the old car multi CD system trays that could hold like 8 or 10 cds. those car ones had the tray removable. This multi cd drive has it inside the drive, and depending on which button you select in front, the cd gets loaded/unloaded into that drawer? ledger? dunno how to call it

So, do you have to pull out all five discs at once whenever you want to change one of them?

Indeed. I'm a bit fuzzy on it, but you could just press say button 4 and then load a disk in that one or remove it.
I remember the driver even assigning a drive letter for each possibility, ergo a 5disc changer got you five extra drive letters with offcourse only one being available at one time...
Trying to read from multiple cd's at the same time was just an exercise in futility. It worked, but it was horrible, since for every read access it had to load the correct cd, read a few sectors, then load the other cd, read a few sectors... etc... 😁

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Reply 29 of 37, by creepingnet

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fronzel wrote on 2021-04-14, 20:40:
I always liked CD-Changers as I think "something exotic" or "weird" or "complicated" looks best. […]
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I always liked CD-Changers as I think "something exotic" or "weird" or "complicated" looks best.

1280px-Nakamichi_MJ_5_16_1.jpg

Hehehe, that thing just screams "Put all 4 discs for Under a Killing Moon" in me - I guess that was the solution before the invention of SHSUCDX

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Reply 32 of 37, by Anonymous Coward

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In the late 80s and early 90s I was into adventure games. I remember starting in the mid 90s, they began to get kind of big taking up multiple discs...I think it was Riven and Betrayal in Antara that really tried my patience. I would have loved a disc changer for games like that, but they were too expensive and had poor reliability so I didn't bother. Instead I just stopped playing adventure games, which was probably a good thing since most of them sucked in this era anyway.

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Reply 33 of 37, by elfoam

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weedeewee wrote on 2021-04-13, 15:34:
elfoam wrote on 2021-04-13, 14:27:

Plextor and Pioneer slot drives were what all the rich kids had in those times. I'd be finding a Plextor, SCSI version of course.

a plextor slot loader ? I think you mean cady .
edit: mmmh plextor actually has a slot loader.

Good that they have one but I was talking about the Pioneer slot loaders. They looked awesome.. But I'd have a regular SCSI Plextor if one can be found.

Reply 35 of 37, by SimonC

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skyfoxxp wrote on 2021-04-18, 16:12:

Hello ! I would definitely choose a Creative DVD (2X, 5X or 6X), PC-DVD Encore DXR2 (or DXR3).

Those are Panasonic / Matshita OEM but with customised front bezels. They look really good ! 😀

I also thinh that Creative drives look nice and retro, thanks for the suggestion.

Here is one sony DVD burner I found recently, Sony DRU-700A :
31NB0ZCKN8L._AC_.jpg

Reply 36 of 37, by Stiletto

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I'm very interested in seeing a ton of drive teardowns and disassemblies in order to start getting the idea for what components are on which drive controller PCBs, any ideas where to find a bunch of these?

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