The First Computer CD-ROM Drive - Philips CM100 from 1985

[noisedownloader]

MIDI? So why the hell would a CD-ROM use a MIDI port if MIDI is for musical instruments as keyboards (Music Instrument Digital Interface)

[5irR4p70r]

@noisedownloader

I know this CD Rom originally came with a separate controller card specially for this unit, but I don't have it. The connection is the same size as a MIDI. It can plug into it, but I never said it uses the MIDI port

[kinmanyuen]

lol computer geek in the 80's are not to be bullied on, where they might kill you with heavy equipment :-)

[cuttock]

Damn. Clunk.

[Knaeckebrotsaege]

i got a little tip that the interface might be RS-422, for which converters are available on ebay to RS-232 (serial port)

[Kittyslasher69]

We might as well just slip a DVD or Blu-ray reader into the housing of this contraption, and put USB on here to get it to work with modern conputers.

[UzumakiNarutoX3]

It looks a bit like a nes shell.

[nkrazor]

his voice reminds me of Lars Ulrich

[typeanoise]

When does it come out?

[RoboTekno]

Sexy :P

[5irR4p70r]

@RoboTekno

indeedy :P

[xan1242]

MIDI?

[Knaeckebrotsaege]

i've got a somewhat similar unit. probably early 90s.

from what i remember mine was a 2x CD-ROM drive as an external box just like your's, except it had the basic audio CD player controls and was somwhat styled like a "normal" CD player..

also had some sort of proprietary data connector.

as i too don't have the controller card, i've used it for audio CDs..

damn.. i wanna go look where in the basement it's hidden now lol

[Knaeckebrotsaege]

found it yesterday while searching for something else.. took some time to find this video again though lol.

the one i've got is a Philips CDD-462 external CD-ROM drive made in early 1994.

Audio part works fine and sounds perfect. uses a CDM-4 drive made by philips.

pics:

bambooz.pytalhost . net/stuff/CDD462/CDD462_1.jpg

bambooz.pytalhost . net/stuff/CDD462/CDD462_2.jpg

that thing was in the basement for years. took it upstairs, plugged it in, plays audio CDs perfectly through my stereo :)

[snakegabber]

Weird reading system.

[TheMegaMuncher]

I don't think it would work with MIDI, since MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface!

[5irR4p70r]

lol yea, I know. But, don't old computer joysticks also use the MIDI connection? I know this CD Rom originally came with a separate controller card specially for this unit, but I don't have it. The connection is the same size as a MIDI

[TheMegaMuncher]

yea they do, I had a Saitek joystick that plugged into my soundcard's gameport. kinda wierd!

[Dant2142]

@5irR4p70r Erm... wrong MIDI, MIDI is a 5-pin Din connector. A game-port, which is a 15-pin Parallel-like connector, seems to be what you're describing and what is in the video.

You likely got the idea because of how the old sound cards had adapters on their game-port connectors to get MIDI out of it because so many of the pins weren't used.

[NinjaSeg]

@5irR4p70r Standard MIDI uses a 5-pin DIN plug. What you seem to be talking about is a Game Port, primarily used to connect joysticks. Though it became a de-facto standard to put MIDI signals on a few of the previously unused pins, allowing the use of MIDI with a special breakout cable, calling it a MIDI port is just going to confuse the hell out of people. It's a Game Port.

[Amishman35]

I remember my father getting an Amiga 500 computer on August 19, 1989 and the printer had dip switches on it.

[cd1306]

cool man

[stru81]

Someone told me most CD-ROM drives made during the mid 80's used their own propriety interfaces and thus needed their own cards before SCSI was widely adopted (excepting those CD-ROM drives that came with those Sound Card Multimedia PC kits)

by the early 90's.

[5irR4p70r]

Thanks for the info!

[5irR4p70r]

The connection is smaller than a parallel port. It fits perfectly into the yellow MIDI ports. The Control Card could very well be SCSI, or the ancient ISA. I have actually managed to find Drivers for it online (it surprisingly wasn't hard at all to find), and they are DOS drivers. Since this thing was released in 1985, those are pretty much the only drivers I will find for it. I do have Windows 3.11, so maybe one day I will mess around with seeing if it will work with that version of Windows.

[Lachlant1984]

I wouldn't be surprised if you can get the unit to work with Windows 3.11, and possibly windows 95, but I wouldn't try it with anything newer than that. I assume you'd also need a sound card if you want to take full advantage of CD-ROM technology, I doubt that unit has a built in sound card. I think their were some early sound cards that also had SCSI controllers on them, but don't quite me.

[Lachlant1984]

Just look at the size of the damn thing! I was wondering if you need to connect the unit to a paralell printer port, but clearly you need an interface card, I wonder if the interface the unit uses is based on SCSI? I'm a bit too young and inexperienced to remember the days of having to set up baud rate, data bits, stop bits, handshaking and paraty, but that's bossibly what you'd need to do with this monstor. Something tells me you'd have trouble getting that working with Windows XP or Vista.