Re: Somewhat OT question about CD-ROM speeds

"Roberto Waltman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> >But it was, as far as I know, Phillips that required CD-ROM drives to be
1X
> >only.   They were required to be able to play audio CD's, and only at 1X.
>
> It seems that today, (when the fact that a computer has a
> CD-ROM drive is as obvious as it having memory or a
> CPU,) is easy to forget that compact disks were conceived
> as higher quality replacement for cassette tapes, and that,
> at the beginning of time, CD players/drives were available
> for music only, not as computer peripherals.

(snip)

> And of course, all of them had to work at the same speed, in
> the same way that cassette tape decks must run at the same
> speed if you want to transfer media from one to another.

Reel to reel 0.25inch audio tape has a variety of different speeds and track
formats, all incompatible.  The stereo tapes have the tracks interleaved so
that tape heads are easier to make, and channel separation is better, but
that makes stereo and mono tapes incompatible.   The interleaved track
format Phillips wouldn't allow, so stereo cassettes have the tracks adjacent
to each other, and only one speed is allowed.  (There are high speed
duplicators, but the playback speed is always the same.)  One should not be
surprised that they expected the same for CD's.

> The demand for higher speed drives ('N' times 150 Kbit/sec)
> did not exist until they began to be used for software distribution.

Around 1987 I saw a copy of CD-ROM magazine and I thought how strange that
was.  CD-ROM seemed a nice idea, but I didn't think it was worth a whole
magazine.  For software distribution, at least at the time, 1X was probably
good enough.  For games that need to read off the CD while running the
higher speeds are needed.

-- glen