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LGR - Hitachi CDR-1503S CD-ROM from 1987 (Patreon)

Published:
2020-07-14 16:58:48
Edited:
2020-07-24 03:42:11
Imported:
2021-03

Content

https://youtu.be/yBupNdYe08g

Greetings folks! I hope you've had a nice week. And I hope you're in the mood for some optical media being read amusingly slowly by an IBM PC, heh.

This video is all about the 1987 CD-ROM drive experience. In particular, the Hitachi CDR-1503S/Amdek Laserdrive-1, both of which were launched in '87 at just under $900. And for that you got a whopping 153 KBps sequential transfer rate from ~550MB discs spinning at a leisurely 200-535 RPM! Yes, single speed read-only goodness. And if you had the cash, up to four of them could be daisy chained together for over two gigabytes of spinny laser data. Amazing!

Yeah this is another one of those videos that's been in the works for the better part of a year. I've had the Amdek unit for a long time and got the Hitachi one more recently, with both needing a bit of repair work. At first it was just going to be a repair video on the Amdek, but that ended up being rather boring. Then it was going to be an LGR Blerb with me just demonstrating the drive, and that ended up somewhat lacking as well. So I took all the footage from both of those projects, edited it all down into something coherent, then combined them with a new 10 minute section of scripted LGR stuff. The result is that the first ten-ish minutes consist of work from the past week or so, with the next twenty minutes being ex-Blerb material and an outro that I recorded just last night. A bit scattered in how it all came together but hey, I think it works.

Enjoy the compact disc nostalgia!

Files

The 1987 CD-ROM Experience: Hitachi CDR-1503S

What was the PC CD-ROM experience like in 1987? Let's find out with the Hitachi CDR-1503S / Amdek Laserdrive-1, both launching in '87 at just under $900. And for that you got a whopping 153 KB/s sequential transfer rate from 550MB discs spinning at a leisurely 200-535 RPM! Ahh, single speed read-only goodness. ● LGR links: https://www.patreon.com/LazyGameReviews https://www.twitter.com/LazyGameReviews https://www.facebook.com/LazyGameReviews ● Grab an archive of the Hitachi interface drivers here: https://archive.org/details/hitachi-cdrom-drivers-DOSPC ● Music courtesy of: http://www.epidemicsound.com #LGR #CompactDisc #Retrospective

Comments

Anonymous

I got my first CD-ROM drive in my PC back in 1993 and it was also a single speed drive. I didn't know back then that I was purchasing 6 year old technology...

Anonymous

Of course circa '87 a PC HDD might have, say 20MB? (I bought a laptop in 1992 with a 40 MB drive). 550 MB of data must have seemed like infinity.

Anonymous

15:10 - wow!

Anonymous

You have me wanting to setup a cheap DOS machine as a full-time CD player just for the novelty 🤣

Anonymous

Who is he? A flashing picture at 15:10?

Anonymous

I think the first software i can remember on CD was Tonka construction 2, not exactly the earliest piece of CD software but its still about 21 years ago which is crazy to me. I really enjoyed playing that one as a kid

LazyGameReviews
>>40344977

Older than that even! Depending on how one defines it, CD-ROM as a standard goes back to 1982. Still seemed like amazing new stuff in the 90s though.

LazyGameReviews
>>40345160

It's still such a crazy leap in tech to look back on. Many of the older CD-ROMs I have barely came close to filling up the whole disc!

Anonymous

Wow! These things were CRAZY! I had forgotten about them over the years. Amazed it still works. Very cool!

Anonymous

I had one of these! My dad worked for the local reference library and he brought one home for me to pull apart when they were getting rid of old junk.. So I pulled it apart completely! I was about 12 or so.. Then he brought another home a few years later and I did the same. Really wish I'd kept one now. I never had the card at the time. I didn't realise it wasn't SCSI although I was young so I learned a few things watching. I used to use my dad's work computers way back when I was 7/8 years old and it was my first experience of the internet. CD-Rom was a reference format (he worked in the reference library) so they had two of these, loads of 486 computers and quite a few with internal drives. All IBM! They had two machines per printer and you could switch between them with a big clunky switch box. Those were the days!

BastetFurry

Now that would be a period correct CD-ROM for my "new" Commodore PC 40-III :D

Anonymous

The first time I remember playing with a CD-ROM was the fall of 1993. My Mom worked at a publishing company at the time, and the art department had ridiculously expensive Macintosh setups that they kindly allowed a curious six year old to manhandle, mostly unsupervised. Myst had just come out, so I got to play that. And being that I was six and it was Myst, I got absolutely nowhere with it but found the whole experience amazing. It had to be cut short though because someone needed to install the special font Prince had made when he changed his name to that symbol. Man, I miss the 90s.

Anonymous

Come to think of it, even as late as 1994, after I bought a Mac LCIII, I bought a separate, big heavy standalone Mac-compatible CD player -- mostly in order to play MYST.

Anonymous

As someone that now works for Hitachi since 1. July 2020 - i am very much intrigued :))

Jim Leonard

That looks very much like the library setup I mentioned to you over Twitter. I look forward to seeing what you do with it in the video.

Anonymous

I’m actually surprised; I assumed all CD-Rs of that era required caddies.

Mark

It works!

Anonymous

My first CD-ROM drive was in 1993 and was single speed. I played Rebel Assault on it, and just for that it was the best thing on earth for little me :)

LazyGameReviews
>>40352674

Nice! I tried to recreate the most common setups I saw in late 80s media coverage, it's a classic look.

LazyGameReviews
>>40348265

Between the two of them there's one working machine at least, heh. The Amdek drive is still broken and the Hitachi unit doesn't play audio correctly. Thank goodness for editing!

LazyGameReviews
>>40348283

Neat! I loved pulling apart stuff like this at that age. VCRs, tape decks, computers, monitors, credit card readers... anything old from my parents' workplaces. In retrospect, I'm lucky I didn't get shocked more often than I did, haha.

LazyGameReviews
>>40348779

That's awesome, very lucky to have had such an experience! The only place I saw CD-ROMs back then was the local library, also Macintoshes. Nothing too expensive, but nonetheless amazing seeing software on CDs at all.

LazyGameReviews
>>40354331

Actually used to think this myself! All my oldest CD-ROM drives were caddy drives for a long time. Then I discovered the Philips CM100 from 1985 and it opened up a whole new world of drives I didn't know existed.

LazyGameReviews
>>40357872

An incredible experience at the time, ahh. Felt like magic being able to shoot things within a streaming 3D(ish) world like that.

Anonymous

Wow, a CD ROM drive the same age as me. Kinda crazy to think about.

Anonymous

oh am it the only one putting those prices through inflation calculator... $670.5 for bookshelf and over $2000 for the cdrom in today's prices.. wow

Anonymous

It's funny (and a bit weird) at 15:08 to see countries listed, which do not exist anymore — at least by that name saved on the CD. "German dem. Rep." ceised to be in 1990, "Czechoslovakia" is now known as "Czech Republic"... That CD is really old 😂

LazyGameReviews
>>40363536

That it is, can't say I have too many discs dating back to the Reagan administration. The Berlin Wall was standing tall and the USSR was still doing its Iron Curtain thing. 1987, man.

Kris Asick

The Softkey 2000 Hit Games collection is SPREADING! Though I'm curious to know if yours has all the warez intact like mine does, as there was a later release which removed it all because selling pirated software in Radio Shacks across the country probably wasn't good for PR. :P

LazyGameReviews
>>40364678

Sure does! One of the first things I tried running off-camera was Activision's home port of Rampage from one of the arcade subdirectories, heh.

avfusion

The old CD-ROG, CD-Read Only Goodness

Matt Standish

I used to dial into a BBS that would host Walnut Creek CDs on one of these.

Anonymous

Subliminal Owen Wilson...

Anonymous

I still can't get over that hard drive sound, immediately brings back memory of playing Police Quest on the old machine in Dads study

Isaac Alvarado

1987 was the first year of the color Macintosh. Imagine going from a 512/128k or even a Plus to a Macintosh II and one of these bad boys.

Anonymous

You say a straight up repair video and a blerb of this player were boring? I think you overestimate the bar that internet people have, especially at the moment, for what they consider entertaining! I have no doubt I would have enjoyed the heck out of either of those. Still, I won't deny that this video is probably considerably better anyway ;)

Anonymous

Thanks for showing off your Hitachi. 😜

Mark Balcerak

Can you post some pics of the DAC circuitry?

Steve Skafte

Don't have much to add, just want to say that this is one of the most pleasant viewing experiences I've had of late, and I thank you for that!

Terry Lee

Yeah I didn't experience CD-ROM for computers until my IBM Aptiva with Windows 95 around the year 1996 when I got it. That was a WOW experience for a young 10-year-old! I was used to them playing music but with computers they could do so much more. I had no idea about formats and stuff back then. You just take it all for granted and have fun using it in the way you know how!

evistre

My first software CD was Spelling Blizzard! (I'd love to see you review it.)

Anonymous

Want to head to Vegas? Bring the drive.

Anonymous

Such an interesting bit of kit - really enjoyed the look! Though when it comes to first CD-ROM Software I ever used? Yikes. I think it's certainly down the Encarta route. My parents weren't into computing, so they never really bothered, and so we wouldn't have had any serious stuff during that point.

Anonymous

EGA palm trees! Fantastic.

Asaf Sagi

I think I got my first CD-ROM drive around 1994, I was 7 at the time. I remember the drive was a Creative one. Among my first CDs was a piece of Edutainment called "Four Footed Friends" by Stradiwackius. Trying to conjure up that memory sent be back to memories of the computer store next to my dad's office at the time, it was so nice to recall. I still have computer case badge from that store, that's long gone now.

LazyGameReviews
>>40374351

Anything in particular? I showed all of the circuitry in the video, it should be quite legible in 4K.

LazyGameReviews
>>40371999

It's more a matter of personal standards than overestimating people's desires. I won't release something that I myself am bored by.

Valora Inverse

Oh wow, that's really neat to see - and hey, I can see the local TV station's listing in the phonebook! Good ol' KAIT8.

Jason Wellband

I so wanted a sound card and CD-ROM for my Tandy 2500 XL back in the day. Finally got one in 1995 with a Packard Bell I got for Christmas. My first CD-ROM was the PB Navigator stuff that had quite a bit on it like a Journeyman Project Turbo demo that was fun - and Macromedia Action (I think - kinda like a mix b/t Powerpoint and Visual Basic). My first audio CD was Dark Side of the Moon :P

Anonymous

Probably my first CD stuff were things like Encarta, Warcraft 2, Oregon Trail. That said, the earliest one that made an impact on me was Visual Basic 6. It was a Windows application, and came in a huge developer's starter kit. Packed with manuals and such.

Anonymous

I was using an external Magnavox Philips CDD-461 CD-Rom Player for most of the 1990s. Hated to give it up, but technology moved on and left it in the dust.

Anonymous

Brings back memories of middle school. Our "Media Center" library had one hooked up to a PC and it was amazing technology at the time! :)

Anonymous

I love CDs! To this day I still burn them every so often, usually for the car. I'm thinking about getting a 6 CD changer for my car because although my entire music library is stored on my phone's SD card and I've got YouTube Premium for music I don't have, there's something about the permanence of the playlist you burn. For me it's like a snapshot of my musical preferences, which are always changing, at a given point in my life. Never got too into CD-ROMs. I personally only ever used them for games. But I do think it's fascinating how what started as exclusively a music format was made into data storage for computers complete with solid error correction, when that wasn't even the original purpose of the CD.

Anonymous

Just wanting to confirm the transfer rate you mention at 1:20 I always believed Kbps was kilobits per second, KB/s would be considered kilobytes per second. I've never seen KBps used as a reference point but I could be wrong. Hope it's an easy fix if I'm right.

Uncleawesome

I loved watching this, using Microsoft Bookshelf with so much information on a cd, from 1987. That's awesome! I don't remember the first cd I used, but it was on my Presario 425. As you know, can't fit a cd-rom in there, so I had the ide cable outside, and used another psu to power it. A messy setup but it worked fine. The first software cd was probably from a computer magazine.

LazyGameReviews
>>40458917

Kbps is kilobits per second, KBps is kilobytes per second. I see where there may be confusion though, so I'm gonna change the text. Thanks for bringing it up!

Mac84

Another wonderful video, nice to see that relic still kickin'! I love the design of this CD-ROM drive! Our first CD-ROM drive was an external SCSI drive for our family's Macintosh IIcx computer. I believe the first CD-ROM title (which may have been a pack-in) was titled 'Oceans Below". Fantastic stuff.

Anonymous

My first was Kings Quest V. Back then, being able to listen to the text rather than reading was just mind blowing to me.