The Computer Chronicles - CD ROMs (1991)

[@doburu4835]

We all laugh now, but cd rom was truly Revolutionary

[@RobCoops]

That is probably because of the difference that the internet has made. I have lived through the advent of the micro computers and the introduction of the CD. As a consumer at the time there was nothing like the internet or for the vast majority of people even the idea that something like this might even be possible in our lifetimes. Up to that time for a regular consumer the diskette 1.44MB was the storage medium of choice your harddrive stored maybe 80MB or so. Having a disk that was easily swapped out and stored up to 600MB was a true revolution. The funny thing is that having lived through it it seemed so normal that every year or so the amount of data you could store on a harddrive would dramatically increase, cd-rom's where great but soon enough you needed more than one for some programs as those by then about 700MB that you could store on a single disk was just not enough. Of course not long after the multi cd programs DVD was introduced and disk sizes had grown to be measured in GB's moving on to TB's even. And then it all stopped... and we realized what incredible transformation we had witnessed. From no internet and maybe a computer in some big enterprises to TB's of storage on a smartphone, internet everywhere and used by everyone. Media that are no longer physical but mostly ephemeral and consumed as they are served bit by bit at bit rates that where only possible in our wildest dreams just a few short years ago. It now seems almost silly to think about how great the steps where that were being taken at the time but looking back at it and comparing it to today it would be like seeing today's 4k streams change to 80k (no typo I meant eighty) streams without compression on your smartphone. Now imagine such increases in every 5 to 8 years for a few decades in a row... it was pretty incredible to live through.

[@allentoyokawa9068]

Thank you Japan!

[@quatz1981]

My first PC was back in 1993 and it had a whopping 2x speed CD-ROM drive. Back then it was cutting edge and i was amazed at what you could get with CD-Roms. Being able to load high res photos and video files as well as playing the latest games. A capacity of 700MB of data on one disc was just unreal at the time.

[@barriewilson3052]

I had an amiga at the time. I had simon the sorcerer on i think 10 floppies at 880k uncompressed data. That was just over 10megabytes in total. Point his back in the day for me 700MB or 650MB was just incomprensible.

[@ian_b]

My first CD ROM was around 1995, it was 4x. I installed it in my 486DX2. I was so proud of it.

[@TheAnonapersons]

@@ian_b lol exact same config I had at the same time

[@Смертьвбахилах]

"unreal"?

[@quatz1981]

@@Смертьвбахилах yeah

[@GeorgeLuisGoN]

$895! What a steal

[@bennri]

6:25 "there's over 1000 Tandy stores..." oh how they dropped the ball

[@DarkShadowRage]

Dat CD-rom this new fangled technology will never take off!

[@sbrazenor2]

Yeah, computers now don't even have CD-ROMs. We switched to those new-fangled Super Floppies and Zip Disks. 🤣

[@maynnemillares]

Its great great grandson the UHD Bluray (part of PS5) wishes to disagree.

[@ianmac958]

SPA was competing against spa, the software pirates association.

[@shmehfleh3115]

I'm guessing this aired mid-Desert Storm.

[@oldtwins]

The data on these discs seems trivial to today's standards, but it was a huge leap forward back in the day when online resources were too thin for anything specialized or too expensive just to mess around with (compu$erve charged by the minute, which at 2400 baud didn't get you much in return)

[@ian_b]

I think even those of us alive at the time have forgotten how difficult it was to acquire information before the internet.

[@SkuldChan42]

The CD-ROM future is only up!

[@installtekzdotcom9777]

"is it available on the Mac?" --Stewart Cheifet

[@customtoggle7938]

On the "Itchy & Scratchy" CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard's key?

[@MattExzy]

I can't deal with these hardcore fans.

[@barriewilson3052]

I so remeber having an Atari ste 520 back in 91 and lusting at the pc, but was way beyond anything i could afford. Tho i did love my ste.

[@peterp2626]

But if CD's came out in 1982, why did it take till '91 for CD-ROMs?

[@RonJohn63]

CD-ROMs existed much earlier, but it was *very* expensive to make them.

[@Miler97487]

I first heard of the CD-ROM in 1987 but it wasn't until about 1992 that I started noticing it becoming more widely available and in '93 the first CD-ROM-only games appearing with 7th Guest and Myst.

[@Shizzmoney74]

crazy I lived thru a time where CDs ruled my "data" life for about 20 years, and then, with-in 5 years... the medium was pretty much obsolete minus value from collecting.

[@griff404]

"Maria Ga... briel"

[@osterreichischerflochlandl4940]

I was very happy with my IOMEGA Zip-drive (USB-host-powered!) with 250MB discs - I think that system had even more value than a CD-ROM.

[@TestTubeBabySpy]

6:20 Leroy Cain???

[@CeeStyleDj]

Were CD ROMs this slow to take off? Because I just finished watching an episode of computer Chronicles about CD-ROMs from 1988 and this episode is 3 years later..

[@RonJohn63]

Yes they were, because of cost, speed and lack of need.

[@sbrazenor2]

I know burners took a while for the same reason. I used to have access to them in the very late 90's as a tech. I'd burn my Napster files onto music CDs whenever a customer would bring in a burner. 🤣 (They were external, and I remember the first ones were external SCSI or bi-directional parallel ports. We didn't have ubiquitous & reliable USB yet.)

[@davidt8087]

@@sbrazenor2I miss SCSI. Love the pronunciation and the port. It would be slow today but I’d take SCSI v2 or 3 or whatever it would be today any day over usb c as it would be much faster probably and support more functions

[@davidt8087]

@@sbrazenor2oh and PS2 ports are way better vs USB for mice and keyboard

[@hurricaneomega]

So the whole "year of the _____" thing has been going on for a while. It's never the year of the Linux desktop though.

[@sbrazenor2]

Every year they ask if it will be. I finally switched back in 2017 myself. Windows generally sucks, macOS has had issues (like that passwordless root issue a while back), and UNIX is great... unless you want something like a functioning browser. (I've tried a number of options.) If Haiku ever got off its ass, I might use that, because I was a BeOS user before Palm killed them... and then HP killed Palm. 🤣 I enjoy Linux. I try distros out all the time to play with different UIs. Windows and MacOS aren't nearly as flexible. 😁👍

[@shpoople4209]

Damn, I guess we'll just have to settle for linux dominance of the smartphone, server, and supercomputer markets...

[@davidt8087]

@@shpoople4209linux is pretty much dominates the server market. It’s more efficient and faster for servers, but lacks software for its consumer OS

[@andrewbevan4662]

Will never be for mainstream home use if it continues to need so much use of the command line

[@andrewbevan4662]

I guess that multichanger can't access more than one disk at a time, so not really useful for most people, just saves a few seconds manually changing the disk?

[@siegfriednorton3854]

that other guest kinda looked like Abraham Lincoln

[@dokols]

Still waiting for my giga-rom.

[@BAZFANSHOTHITSClassicTunes]

The dreamcast used them in 1999.

[@AshtonCoolman]

The Turbografx CD came out years earlier with dope games but we were too brain dead in North America to notice. The Japanese were way ahead. Hell, the FM Towns had a CD-ROM.

[@rmkkkk]

Wait the software shown has copyright date of 1998 while video is titled 1991

[@artmaknev3738]

Back then, people would devour all this info on encyclopedia CD, now people have millions more info for free and watch cat videos instead... IQ progress has taken the downturn.

[@Смертьвбахилах]

PORN progress went up! 😀 whore earn more💰

[@hydrooxy84]

I do agree

[@davidt8087]

Yup. I’ve been making similar comments for years now especially on video for computer chronicles. It’s just sad. Gen z kids at age 18 look like 12 and act like 8 and have the self awareness of 4. They have no originality or talent, all they do is worship whoever they as a group hive mind deem “popular” and throw gobs of money at the “cool” kids enriching them while they themselves remain poor pathetic and insecure. They have oorigjnality and all copy each other, are insecure, and DESPERATE for likes and attention and followers on online social media, in class, they are rude and disrespect and curse the teacher while all the gen z apes in class cheer on the disrespectful ape child and pull out their phones to record. No one dares speak up against the monkey behavior because they’re all insecure fearful copycats who are scared to have the zombie hive mind of the class attack them, because their entire pathetic lives revolve around fitting in with their group and being liked and looking “cool”, going against the hive mind is suicide for them and so many gen z kids have killed themselves because just one day one time the zombie drone hive mind group all turned on them. They’re on tiktok making ugly faces desperate for likes. Girls are super easy too. They quickly say yes to any guy and he doesn’t even have to earn it, they just spread their legs desperate to be liked. How fkn sad

[@StephenKramerstevefunk]

The CD/DVD have come and gone

[@StephenKramerstevefunk]

CD's were probably the worst thimg to happen to music....after mp3s of course lol

[@JohnStopman]

Come and gone? True, but: I still use blu-ray discs to backup stuff, but only if those are M-DISC :-) Standard CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs and also SSDs/HDDs will eventually have corrupted sectors, a M-DISC will last for at least 333 years :-)

[@CeeStyleDj]

Steve Kramer Music is perfect on CDs. If you think vinyl sounds better, it's only because of nostalgia or what you grew up listening to. Vinyl is always going to have flaws in it where CDs have no physical connection or "wear"/"drag". I'm an audio file so I like music on all formats and sure you can get a great record player with an amazing cartridge and audiophile Records but it's still going to have a needle touching a surface. And the frequency response can't match CDs.

[@Inimbrium]

@@CeeStyleDj Actually you're wrong. At least if the vinyl disc is clean and scratch free. Here's why. electronics.howstuffworks.com/is-the-sound-on-vinyl-records-better-than-on-cds-or-dvds.htm

[@morgorth3242]

only downside cd roms had they couldt be rewritten as easy like a flopydisk. you need special cd roms with special rewrite software flopy rewrite as easy as an usb drive

[@yomarukasuga]

My Future Things To Do in 1991: MS-DOS5.0 / MSCDEX / CD-ROM, Windows 3.0 Multimedia Extension with Creative Soundblaster

[@OhFishyFish]

$1950 inflation adjusted for an encyclopedia. Gee, I wonder why people pirate software so much.

[@davidt8087]

And since it was written by one company with limited time and slave wage employees and made for profit and to be released as quickly as possible, with a profit motive, the amount of stuff in the encyclopedia was ORDERS of magnitude less than Wikipedia, was probably more biased, and had more mistakes and or limited data due to the employees having to mostly use books. Today, we have Wikipedia and it’s free. Gen z ape kids who are insecure copycat buffoons could all become Einsteins yet instead they’re desperately on tiktok 24/7 desperate for likes and attention and followers on their stupid videos of lip singing and making ugly stupid faces showcasing their extremely microscopic brain HARD at work

[@crimsonlightbinder]

Aaaa, the days when tech gathered in SF, now hobos, human feces and urine gather

[@edwang8975]

Not likey

[@wallacelang1374]

I actually have the entire Holy Bible (King James Version) on a single CD-ROM, so when I am in a hurry it has a word search feature that finds all verses that contain the word in mere seconds.

[@SkuldChan42]

Wikipedia put all of these bottom feeders out of business ;).

[@Arcsecant]

Spoiler alert: CD-ROM wasn't the medium of the future...

[@smileymalaise]

sure it was, for many years, until the next medium of the future was released.