I'll have check for the cable specs, but this drive is definitely not IDE compatible.

I had a similar but slower CDD-461.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Laser_Magnetic_St … e_International

darry wrote on 2022-09-28, 17:41:

I'll have check for the cable specs, but this drive is definitely not IDE compatible.

I had a similar but slower CDD-461.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Laser_Magnetic_St … e_International

Thank you so much, would it work plugging it directly to my gameport with the correct cable even with that Philips standard? I had the impression the latest models from Philips were more maleable in this regard

Shelby from Tech Tangents did a reverse engineer on the first LMSI cd rom controller (Philips CD-153) card recently. It even works. He tested it in one of his last streams.
Here is a link to his second channel where he dumps his Twitch streams https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUnxjEcIEOGE … yqzAuJuQ/videos

DerBaum wrote on 2022-09-28, 17:47:

Shelby from Tech Tangents did a reverse engineer on the first LMSI cd rom controller (Philips CD-153) card recently. It even works. He tested it in one of his last streams.
Here is a link to his second channel where he dumps his Twitch streams https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUnxjEcIEOGE … yqzAuJuQ/videos

Thanks, I did see that but was unclear whether it would work with the later CDD 462 model, it seems there were multiple controller cards Philips made. His project was so he could use it with a CM-100 CD player

andre_6 wrote on 2022-09-28, 17:52:

Thanks, I did see that but was unclear whether it would work with the later CDD 462 model, it seems there were multiple controller cards Philips made. His project was so he could use it with a CM-100 CD player

If i understood it right the later cards are just better integrated with less chips.
BUT i´m not a LMSI expert. Maybe ask in one of Shelbys streams https://www.twitch.tv/techtangents . He collected a lot of informations around LMSI and the drivers.

And no. A Gameport is not capable of interfacing to LMSI CD-Roms.

darry wrote on 2022-09-28, 17:41:

I'll have check for the cable specs, but this drive is definitely not IDE compatible.

I had a similar but slower CDD-461.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Laser_Magnetic_St … e_International

Found pinout on Twitter if it helps: https://twitter.com/andyAVAVsystems/status/11 … 847018483425280

Edit: what confused me as to be able to use a gameport was seeing this in the Wikiwand page when describing the 16 pin interface versions, as opposed to the 15 pin versions like the CDD 462 I have: "The proprietary 16-pin LMSI CD-ROM interface was relatively short lived and existed on LMSI interface cards and a few ISA sound cards. These sound cards only have internal LMSI connectors, not the external DB-15 connector for external LMSI devices (the DB-15 on sound cards is the game port/UART MPU-401)"

So from what I can see I'm missing the cable, the controller card and the drivers. In any case if someone had one of these external CD players and is able to at least confirm the type of cable and has drivers to share then I could at least solve those for now, thanks in advance

rs422, fascinating

From the information given here, watching the videos, and doing some googling.
The cable should be a normal DB15-F to DB15-F
The driver techtangents uses is this one http://ftp.mpoli.fi/pub/hardware/CDROM/PHILIPS/CM50DRV.ZIP
The readme in that file even mentions the CD461
and since tech tangents cloned the controller card, the info for which is found here https://github.com/AkBKukU/CM153-Repro

I haven't heard any mention yet of actual disk speed performance, but going from the used UART speed which is cap'd at 64Kbit/s (8Kbyte/s) it should be abysmally slow.

FYI, I've got a CD461 & CD462, though no controller card, nor cable. Both do play audiocds, so should read data as well.

Ok, just saw tech tangents install wolfenstein, and it took about 20 minutes(18m58s), which equates to ~2-3KByte/s given a wolfenstein install size of 2555249

The CDD461 was supposedly a 1x drive. With my CM153 card, in a 486 SX25 (and previously a 386 DX25), it was a lot slower, 30 to 70KB/sec AFAICR.

It was a great inexpensive CD audio player at the time ( 1992ish). It was my first one and only cost 50 CAN $ on clearance.

Thank you so much for your help guys, awesome information.

I couldn't understand from the rendering of Tech Tangents' reproduction card if the cable should be DB15 male or female to plug on it, so I'll refrain from buying one until I am sure, I always assumed it would be a male connector to plug on the card like a gameport. It's a shame they wouldn't just enable gameport interface on later models, if that's really the case. I'm tempted to try it though.

I'll have to keep an eye on the Gitbhub page then. Did he mention for how much he would sell each unit it if it came to that?

Obviously the value in an item like this is being a novelty, and it just looks cool beside my 486's also red speed indicator characters. It works, so if I can complete its functions to use on the 486 great, if not, it will keep looking cool!

There is a part list, and according to that, the connector on the card is female, requiring a male connector on the cable, so one would need a DB15 Male to Female cable.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-09-29, 19:44:

There is a part list, and according to that, the connector on the card is female, requiring a male connector on the cable, so one would need a DB15 Male to Female cable.

That does it then for the drivers and cable, great! Again one last thing: did Shelby mention if he's going to reproduce units for sale? Or do I take his open source project (if that's the case) and ask a PCB maker to produce one for me?

In the parts of the videos I watched there was mention of not putting any up for sale, though ymmv.
Since it is available, producing your own will be the thing to do.

darry wrote on 2022-09-29, 17:43:

The CDD461 was supposedly a 1x drive. With my CM153 card, in a 486 SX25 (and previously a 386 DX25), it was a lot slower, 30 to 70KB/sec AFAICR.

It was a great inexpensive CD audio player at the time ( 1992ish). It was my first one and only cost 50 CAN $ on clearance.

Since you state 30 to 70KB/s, I hope you're implying kilobytes.
Do you still have that setup? I'd definitely like some hq photos of the interface card, preferably without any labels obscuring any chip id. 😀
Unless it's the same as the one tech tangents cloned, though I doubt it otherwise you wouldn't get the speed you mentioned which I'm assuming is kilobytes.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-09-30, 07:23:

Since you state 30 to 70KB/s, I hope you're implying kilobytes. Do you still have that setup? I'd definitely like some hq photos […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2022-09-29, 17:43:

The CDD461 was supposedly a 1x drive. With my CM153 card, in a 486 SX25 (and previously a 386 DX25), it was a lot slower, 30 to 70KB/sec AFAICR.

It was a great inexpensive CD audio player at the time ( 1992ish). It was my first one and only cost 50 CAN $ on clearance.

Since you state 30 to 70KB/s, I hope you're implying kilobytes.
Do you still have that setup? I'd definitely like some hq photos of the interface card, preferably without any labels obscuring any chip id. 😀
Unless it's the same as the one tech tangents cloned, though I doubt it otherwise you wouldn't get the speed you mentioned which I'm assuming is kilobytes.

Yes kilobytes.

I no longer have that anymore. My mother used it a standalone CD player for some time, but I believe it has been given away. Interface card and cable are long gone.

For the speed, I can't say whether it was normal or not. My unit might have had something wrong with it.

I dont expect Philips to somehow incorporate faster interface in the drives with baud auto negotiation.
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/phi … om-found.35616/ photos show similar ultra primitive setup inside the Philips CM100 drive as in the controller cloned by Shelby. Philips CM100 looks like its only capable of transferring small buffer of raw stream straight from the disk with all the magic happening in PC driver.

andre_6 wrote on 2022-09-28, 17:34:

Searching for the correct cable to buy I'm confused with the DA-15 vs. DB-15 difference. According to the manual, the device uses"15 Subminiature D - RS422" interface. As I've only found DB-15 cables for sale, is this it?:

DA-15 is the correct name for the connector. Most D-subminiature connectors is wrongly named DB, I've done it many times myself too. One problem with this is that a DE-15 (VGA) and a DA-15 (game port) can be confused as the same connector when calling them DB-15.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature

andre_6 wrote on 2022-09-29, 20:09:

weedeewee wrote on 2022-09-29, 19:44:

There is a part list, and according to that, the connector on the card is female, requiring a male connector on the cable, so one would need a DB15 Male to Female cable.

That does it then for the drivers and cable, great! Again one last thing: did Shelby mention if he's going to reproduce units for sale? Or do I take his open source project (if that's the case) and ask a PCB maker to produce one for me?

Message him to ask, I suspect he'd be interested in helping and he'll have probably at least 5x PCBs of which he's seemingly only used 1. He just demonstrated in his latest video that the card works with the open source design that's published right now and did say it should work with later CDD drives.