I would say 1996 was the year it became standard on all computers.

So basically highend 486s ie, Cyrix/AMD 5x86 class, I remember cd-roms being commonly packaged with DX2-66s but wouldn't suprised if they didn't have it.

Shouldn't be hard to check by scanning older magazines and checking the advertisements...

1996 is definitely too early:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcObnzelCGY

1997 This Gateway 2000 seems to have a focus on Multimadia (speakers, microphone and CD):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnKm66pYK-Q

In this region here, a lot of people got their first CD-ROM in 1994. This was typically either SCSI or one of the proprietary interfaces. Mostly Mitsumi and Sony. It started to get really popular end of 1995, when the first SCSI CD burners with caddy got as cheap that you could buy one as consumer.
So maybe it was 1997 then mainstream, which is probably difficult to define exactly. As enthusiast you adapt new technologies early.

I seem to recall 1994 is when CD-ROM drives became must have items. You could still buy PCs without them in 1994, but if you look at the old magazines from 1994 you'd probably find that any respectable system without one.

1996 is "too early"? 🤣 no

I'll second 1994 for the CD-ROM gaining mainstream in the PC. The whole "Multimedia PC!" and Myst being primary hype driving factors. (Yeah I know 7th Guest is earlier, but Myst was the big one, and it was bundled with many a CD-ROM drive then) - and I don't think 1994 is too early, either. There's plenty of casual CD-ROM titles from 91-93

I seem to recall 1994 is when CD-ROM drives became must have items.

Yeah, 1994 is about right. They started gaining a lot of popularity in 1992-93 with the new 'multimedia PC' craze, but by 1994 pretty much everybody had one.

The problem with looking at old ads is that it doesn't give you any context. Sure, you could buy a stripped-down machine without a CDROM drive in 1996, but that doesn't tell you how many people actually bought them, or how many of those machines got upgraded with CDROM drives after the fact.

My first was in either 91 or 92 , I got the creative bundle with a Soundblaster (I think it was a 16), I ran it on my 386-25. I don't think anything is as exciting in computers now a days as it was back in those days. I'm not speaking specifically of CD drives or sound cards but everything moved much quicker back then and there were more unique items coming to market. Everything seems really stagnant now.

The first CD-ROM game I picked up was King's Quest V.

It was in 1992, when I was drooling over my cousin brother's shiny new 486 system with a CD-ROM drive. He also had one those 5ft.10Pack CD-ROM collection. It was a multimedia blast. I was still stuck with my 286 then.

Sound Cards entered into mainstream PCs before the CD-ROM drives. Probably in 1990 or 1991, and they were more of a luxury back then. My classmates finally convinced me to get a Sound Card (and I in-turn, had to convince my dad to get it when I "upgraded" my 286 to add a hard drive) - it was the mighty Sound Blaster 1.5 which came boxed brand new in 1991. I still have the box, disks and the working card.

MT-32 was ruling the PC music and sound scene even before 1990, but it never entered the mainstream due to the high cost then. Sierra did help to boost the sales though. But it is "mainstream" now amongst vintage PC enthusiasts. 😁

MT-32 was never part of my PC experience then so I must be considered hipster for not having any extenal music modules 😉

We picked up our first PC, a Packard Bell Legend 406CD sometime in mid-1995. I remember it came with a coupon for a free upgrade to Windows 95 in a few months.

That one came with some kind of crystal sound chip and a 4x CD, so by then it was definitely mainstream as that was (I believe) some sort of back to school bundle machine that we got from Best Buy (for $1700, we still have the receipt)

Most CD-ROM kits bundled a WSS card for the value price. Diamond had a CS4248-based one that had Interplay 10th, Myst, Megarace, Rebel Assault with it, and I think some AZTECH shareware CD too (specifically, "AZTECH's Super Games")...

From my recollection, 1992 is when they first became "readily available", 1994 is when they were "standard" on higher-end rigs, and by 1996, all but the lowest-end machines had them.

Yes, you could still find computers without a CD-ROM drive as late as 2000 (especially on notebooks,) but it was rare by that point.

Maybe there is a difference between US and Europe then. Or I'm getting it all wrong 😀

Now I was quite an early CD adopter, purchasing the Mitsumi single speed drive (the one that pulls out as a whole) and upgrading my 386, but I was pretty much the only one in my high school class to have a CD drive.

I remember Rebel Assault and 7th Guest as early games on this media.

leileilol wrote:

The whole "Multimedia PC!" and Myst being primary hype driving factors. (Yeah I know 7th Guest is earlier, but Myst was the big one, and it was bundled with many a CD-ROM drive then) - and I don't think 1994 is too early, either. There's plenty of casual CD-ROM titles from 91-93

Indeed, the "MPC Standard" was introduced in 1991.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC

Considering that was still being flogged in 1996, and considering that Windows 95 still had a floppy-disk release, one might propose that 1996 might still be too early.

I got a new PC from my employer that had a pentium 100, goldstar [2x?] cd drive, windows 95, motherboard had onboard ati mach64 graphics. An aztech sound card and speakers were in the box too. That would probably have been a bog standard business machine [I was working for a government dept, I doubt they bought me a top end multimedia pc for running 123 and word perfect]. Would have been 1995.

In America 1993/94 was when multimedia went mainstream and became a must-have feature for the general public. In 1991 my family's 486 (generic clone) didn't come with one, but by 1995 the Micron Pentium 133 we replaced it with had a quad-speed Sony and an AWE32 by default.

It was double-speed drives that really took off around 1993, and the release of games like Rebel Assault and Myst and 7th Guest occurred that year. Plus the public hype about multimedia reached a crescendo around that time. By 1995 they were definitely standard because most new software was released on CD, including operating systems, office suites, and games. To this date I have never seen a set of Windows 95 floppy disks because hardly anyone needed them. Again, this applies to America only.

I only thought of Win95 floppy version as "version for laptops"

The computers in my moms office were Pentium 1s with CD-ROMs but no soundcards. In fact most old office computers I came in contact with had no soundcard as late as 2003. 1994? Maybe for USA / Western Europe.