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LGR - NEC MultiSpin 4Xc: 7 CD-ROM Changer (Patreon)

Published:
2018-08-30 14:25:30
Imported:
2021-03

Content

Always thought these were awesome as a kid, but now that I have one myself, well... heh, I mean it's still pretty awesome, and it's always fun opening up new old stock items like this! Wish it was better suited to multi-disc PC games though.

Files

NEC 7X CD ROM

Comments

Anonymous

When you think you have seen it all, Clint surprises with something new 😮 I have never heard about an multi cd-rom drive before.

moosemaimer

I ran into this same issue trying to run games off separate drives back in the day... it would have made a lot more sense if those numbered buttons just swapped the disk and it had a separate eject function so they all ran on the same drive letter.

Anonymous

I'd love to see you do a Phantasmagoria playthrough.

Anonymous

The 12-year-old Mac fanboy of the 90's still living inside me is dying of schadenfreude over all the problems you're having with this product... not only the weird SCSI issues in Windows 95+ but also that it doesn't work with multi-CD games. Games on the classic MacOS would look at the volume labels (since Mac doesn't have drive letters) so multi-CD games *should* work fine on this if you tried it on a Mac

Anonymous

Glad I never bought something like that. I would have been disappointed when it didn't autochange.

Anonymous

I remember "Under a Killing Moon" had the ability to say each disk was in a different drive, I'd assumed that was for network loaders, but this is a more likely case.

Anonymous

I didn't have a CD changer, instead I just had 2 CD-ROM drives in my computer (ok, one was a burner). Some multi-disk games, I think Riven, actually would scan each CD-ROM drive when asking for a disk change, so I could load 2 disks at once and it would actually work.

Anonymous

So, I have a sort of story about this. Sometime in the late 1990s I came upon a store that was selling a bunch of used NEC 4-disc changers. These were the internal models. I had this crazy idea and bought 4 of them. I had access to a CD burner at work, so it occurred to me I could put all 4 of these into my home file-server and then load up 16 burned CDs with all of my files. Up to that point, I think my server only held about 1 or 2 GB of data and I couldn't store everything on the server at one time. (I was already a person who collected a lot of video files of TV shows and stuff that I captured with my capture card) So this gave me over 10 GB worth of storage, which at the time was a lot. I didn't care that the speed was only a 4X CD-ROM, for what I used it for, that was fine. And it was much cheaper than buying an equivalent sized hard-drive. And what was best is I figured I didn't have to worry about accidentally erasing anything since it was all on write-once CD-R. So, I thought it was the coolest thing. But, eventually hard drive sizes kept increasing, along with a decreasing price tag and eventually made my little server setup obsolete. having said all of that, I would have NEVER used such a drive on a personal computer. They were a pain to setup. They were good for a server, though.

Anonymous
>>15082652

Ahah exactly my feeling :) Never seen one of those untill now.

Anonymous

At first I thought it will have one unique disk drive letter and that each button will be loading the CD in that drive without the need of opening the trail. But I suppose it was not for that purpose that those drives exists... A bit disapointed. Excellent video nonetheless :)

Anonymous

Clint, couldn't you send in that registration card to NEC? As they're still in business, contrary to many of the other companies that you've got registration cards from in other videos, it would be great to see what their respond would be! :) Also, another awesome video about obscure hardware from the 90's. Thank you, good sir!

LazyGameReviews
>>15085786

I get asked this every time I show a registration card. And nah, I'd rather hold onto the card since it's part of the package. There are tons of videos of people trying that already on YouTube, and for the most part they either never get a response or they're returned to the sender.

LazyGameReviews
>>15084920

Now that's a more suitable use case scenario for a thing like this. Ideal for tossing a bunch of discs into and leaving them there for access whenever needed down the road. Sounds like a great network setup for back then!

Terry Lee

I knew these things existed, but I always assumed they held up to 4 CDs. I'm quite impressed they managed to fit in 7. I think Neverwinter Nights was the PC game I had that came with the most discs.I think Wizardry 8 also came with a lot of CDs. and what's up with the radiation warning? Did you order this from Chernobyl?

Anonymous

Since they're all separate drive letters, it seems like a good use for this would be running seven different games that each need a single CD to run. I remember The Sims 1 needed the disc for DRM purposes, even though the data was all on my C: drive.

LazyGameReviews
>>15088741

I've always just applied no-CD cracks to my retail games since it normally results in a better experience. But yeah, back in the day it would've been handy to keep seven of your most-used CD-ROMs accessible!

Anonymous

Never owned an external multi CD-ROM unit myself, but did acquire a Mountain CD7 Minichanger from a neighbor back in February 2015. <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/y9lwepuwfpzpxgp/New0472.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/y9lwepuwfpzpxgp/New0472.png?dl=0</a> <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/yx5zu79xnljd673/New0479.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/yx5zu79xnljd673/New0479.png?dl=0</a> <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/hs9l0mw78le4ev5/New0480.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/hs9l0mw78le4ev5/New0480.png?dl=0</a> <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/uo5es2b45yd5kdf/New0481.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/uo5es2b45yd5kdf/New0481.png?dl=0</a> It's a SCSI double speed 7 disc drive, was last used in 2001 and came with manuals, cables, drivers/utilities, and a Future Domain TMC-1680 ISA SCSI card (with manuals and software). I also opened it up for a peek inside. <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/o6h60xgtczppyt1/New0643.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/o6h60xgtczppyt1/New0643.png?dl=0</a> <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/gy4hrsa6v7fhhcy/New0644.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/gy4hrsa6v7fhhcy/New0644.png?dl=0</a> <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ta27iq4d7ptkfs/New0647.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ta27iq4d7ptkfs/New0647.png?dl=0</a> <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/zu02qii98se1jva/New0648.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/zu02qii98se1jva/New0648.png?dl=0</a> (This thing is jam packed, there's hardly any empty space left! That explains its weight of almost 4lbs o_O) It came with two drivers disks; one has a regular driver that creates 7 drive letters and has the same issues as the NEC, the other has a driver called CD PATHfinder which creates a single drive letter, lists the 7 slots as virtual directories and each CD gets listed and associated with the slot it was last used in. This works well enough with productivity and media applications, but games are a mixed bag - some can't find the CD (Warcraft 2, Whiplash), others loose track of what slot the CD is in (Creature Shock). I don't have Phantasmagoria, but did borrow THe 11th Hour from a friend (4 CDs) and it worked like it should; the FMV scenes were not smooth though which is to be expected (this is a 2x drive after all, even SCSI can't compensate for that). At present I have the CD7 on storage, it's too big and bulky for me to use it with my P166MMX PC. <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/5xyk43lsm1t7rw4/New0649.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/5xyk43lsm1t7rw4/New0649.png?dl=0</a> If I do find a permanent place to keep it at, then I'll give it another spin.

Anonymous

What is this knife ?

Seán Byrne

With the dip-switches on the back, I'm surprised they didn't add one more that would toggle between between single letter and separate letters, where in single letter mode the user would push the desired disc # button to choose the active disc. This reminds me of a backup tape drive at a company I previously worked for (~15 years ago), where the tape contents were accessible by drive letter. It sounds like a great idea by being able to backup as simple as saving to floppy disk. Unsurprisingly, it caused terrible stuttering whenever anything tried accessing that drive letter such as installation software. As for real-world use, trying to copy off (i.e. recover) files was an extremely time consuming process as Windows would spend several minutes causing the tape drive to seek here &amp; there before finally being able to copy off any files. I was glad when that drive finally failed, probably due to the excessive seeking anytime something accessed its drive letter.

Anonymous

When that first comes on, did it go through those clunks exactly 7 times?

Anonymous

Oh man, that SD Card wallet of what I assume were installed Operating Systems looks fun. Me of 20+ years ago would have loved the stuff we have access to today.

GadgetBlues
>>15083938

Yep, I used this exact drive with Under a Killing Moon (and the sequel) and it worked like a charm!

Anonymous

While listening to the drive start up, the tune to Pink Floyd's Money came to mind :)

Anonymous

This would have been great back in the day if you ran a BBS, I remember some of them used CDs for the files area. Having seven in at once would have been rad.

Foone Turing

I could have sworn I had another one of these in my collection and I thought I could easily check to see if it's any smarter than this one, but after checking the only one I can find is THIS EXACT MODEL! which is less than useful :) I'll keep an eye out!

Anonymous

I had one back in the day. What I used it for was my Renegate 1005 BBS. You would load up one of the shovelware disks in each slot and let the system catalogue them on the hard-drive. Then when someone wanted to download something it would copy it from disk to hard-drive and let them download it. The reason to copy it to hard-drive was the loading time between disks. If you had two users trying to download something from two disks it would never work. So it worked as a sort of archival or offline storage medium back when 1-gig drives were huge.

SuperBunnyBun

My mistake, said before watching. I had a nec one too, but mine was internal and had a open front cd feeder. As in no tray to sit it on, just a slot to push it into

Anonymous

I think I had a TEAC 5.25" internal bay mountable version of something like this back in the day. I used it to serve multiple CD-ROMs over my Wantree RemoteAccess dial-up BBS! :-D

LazyGameReviews
>>15094285

It really is a retro dream come true to so easily be able to swap operating environments like that!

Anonymous

BTW these drives don't notify the OS of drive loads. The reason is because of the time it would take to switch between drives to read them and do AutoRun. If you click on the actual drive letter in windows it'll change to the disk and read it. That's the reason why in your video the CD-Rom's didn't show up under My Computer. You need to open the actual drive. Now if you want an exercise in futility try opening two CD-ROM's at once.

Anonymous
>>15112147

I had one of those too. It was a 2x4 NEC changer. Worked good from what I remember. But it was a slot loader, you just hit the button and wait for it to quit flashing and slide the disk in. I sold it when I upgraded to the 4x7 model :)

Anonymous
>>15083501

The problem is all these drives have the loading/unloading notification disabled because of the long change time between disks, at least in windows. That's a good question though, how would it have showed up on a Mac. You still have the same problem with it taking 10 minutes to read all 7 disks though just to get the volume labels.

Anonymous

Funny, my first thought was Phantasmagoria, because it has 7 CDs. That sucks that it won't read them all as 1 drive though, would be better if it worked like a CD changer and you could just choose which one you wanted to read.