Fascinating 1996 NEC CD-ROM Changer Mechanism

1996 NEC CDR-C251 4 CD-ROM Changer ASMR - have you ever seen anything like this?
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#vintagecomputing #msdos #asmr

[@ctrlaltrees]

CDs go in, CDs come out

[@cromulence]

That's what CD changing technology is all about!

[@nickwallette6201]

@@cromulence Just tap the button if you're ever in doubt.

[@vwestlife]

I have one of these and did a similar video about it years ago. It was called the "4X4" CD-ROM drive because it accepts 4 discs and runs at 4X speed.

[@kyorin6526]

I had one of these back in the day, it failed on me.

[@minombredepila1580]

I could spend the whole day watching this in a loop... So hypnotic !!!!

[@ctrlaltrees]

That would certainly bump up my view count so no complaints here 😉

[@Xoferif]

That's a top-notch selection of games! 😎

[@TPau65]

Wow, never seen something like this for PC! A car audio CD-Changer maybe. I love old hardware with sophisticated mechanics. Like my Pioneer CLD-D925 Laserdisc player: When Laser reaches the end of one side, the disc (which is quite heavy as you might know) stops, starts spinning in the opposite direction and at the same time the laser moves to the other side of the disc and the second side is played! Takes about 10 seconds and sounds like the player is "exploding"! 😂 Also fantastic: The Akai Invert-O-Matic tapedeck from the 70's, shown in the Outro of Techmoans videos!

[@rc55uk]

Oh lord, this brings back some not so great memories - install one of these in a Windows 95 system and it spends forever cycling through all four drives looking for autorun.inf and icons. Great drive but I wish it had some chill in Windows 95!

[@ctrlaltrees]

Can confirm, this drive has no chill!

[@prawnk1ng]

I had all these games. True relics of the golden age

[@Sozzled39]

That's oddly fascinating! I've always wondered how the mechanism worked.

[@StartupSound]

Always loved NEC as a company and its products. I wish they had made more CRT models beyond the early 90's

[@SianaGearz]

They continued manufacturing CRT PC monitors in a joint venture with Mitsubishi up until early mid 2000s, they were excellent.

[@WorkshopGreg]

I used to resell these back in the day here in the US at an independent computer store. Mechanically, I never had one fail. But, they were a bit of a mismatch between hardware and drivers. There wasn't a way to run it as a single drive letter to support multi-disc applications of the day (i.e. the type that would prompt you to insert a specific disc and rarely a way to change which drive letter it would look to for that disc.) The drivers represented each disc slot as a different drive letter to the OS. There wasn't much use for this, practically speaking. Needless to say, they weren't all that popular once we figured that out. Really too bad - it could have been a game changer with just a little more engineering work on the driver side.

[@nickwallette6201]

Yeah, it's funny to think about that. The decision to represent each drive as a drive letter, and make them all obligatorily mounted and accessible at all times -- that kind of spoiled the usability of changers w/o some kind of out-of-band control mechanism. An otherwise useful and affordable technology, completely unadopted because of a decision made by OS authors back when having two drives connected to one computer was a luxury.

[@ukzoinks]

Impressive. I have all those CDs. (As you would expect)😊

[@datassetteuser356]

User: I'm replacing you with something with more storage capacity. Drive: But wait, I can change!

[@prawnk1ng]

The noise is the background really enhances the video.

[@alexandermirdzveli3200]

Now you can play Pandora Directive.

[@colinsphoneemail]

I was watching your Clint LGR video, and you mentioned this, so I had to stop and come watch this. I had two of these drives back in 1996. It was a cool little drive back then.

[@barthonhoff5547]

I still have a Pioneer and a Nakamichi with similar mechanism. The Pioneer needs a cassette and the Nakamichi is a 7disc changer

[@RetroBytesUK]

Had that exact cd changer in work.

[@J-D-P]

Very cool. Thanks for that. I have a Sony 5 disc one that I assume works exactly like this but to be honest I was always curious how it actually worked. Well now I know! Thanks again and Kudos.

[@0072sy]

A friend had a six stacker CD player in his Ford XR3i. 😂

[@DjDudukBruka]

genius!!!! GENIUS!!!BRAVO!!!

[@hadesmcc]

Now that's some pr0n right there, down to the selection of games even.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Ooh I do love a nice bit of mechanism

[@jdmcs]

I had one of these back in the day, briefly. I didn’t appreciate the separate drive letters for each disc. The thing ended up failing while loaded with discs and I had to take it apart to get my discs out.

[@stevvieb]

Got one of these from back in the day (benefit of being a hoarder, still have my A1200 with Zorro bus expansion,Blizzard 060 and tower) Never seen it with the top off.

[@RetroTinkerer]

It's been a while since I had my old PC with the CD changer connected (Panasonic SQ-TC512N) I remember that it could be used both in multi drive letter and single drive letter mode but don't remember the details 😅

[@BrandonNedwek]

Satisfying

[@prk55]

Would like to see that disc change from the top. Think the cut to the front view was a bit too quick to see what was happening

[@paulladdie1026]

I believe, I had a 6 CD version of this, many years ago 🙂

[@Ganiscol]

Domo arigato, Mr. CD-ROMboto. 🤝

[@monthersretrothings2889]

Very cool! Is it IDE?

[@ScottsGameAsylum]

What is this witchcraft

[@rivards1]

r/highlysatisfying

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

All ran from the one motor?

[@SianaGearz]

There's a stack motor, a spindle motor, a head transport motor, and a disk transport motor, at the very least i think. A basic optical drive has 3 motors.

[@xAbhimanew]

that is too much mechanism for me.