Yesterday I thought my gaming computer was b0rken because Windows 10 was freezing halfway into boot, but turns out it was a wifi card causing hardware problems. That card couldn't get any more dead.
The pinhole eject only works when the power is off, otherwise the drive holds the tray closed. Be cool to see it run with the top cover off though, next to that noisy 56x drive.
@@CaffeinatedTech That is absolutely not true. It works. It's an EMERGENCY eject, to be used only in emergencies. Might be a bit harder when the drive is spinning though.
The true power of the Kenwood is the error correction. Because of the different angles of the beams most scratches could be read without slowing down. We needed this drive becausebit was the only one that could handle on-the-fly CD copy with the Plextor 12x CD Burner. All other ROM drives would empty the Burners cache and mess up the CD by 90% chance.
Back in about 2000, we were all working away in the office when we heard this loud bang. After searching around the room we discovered that one of the guys PC was running a game CD, can't remember which game now, but the tray tried to eject whilst the drive was running at full speed. The CD was shattered, shards of it managed to penetrate the drive case. Pretty wild to witness a PC try to weaponise itself.
I had a drive that would do that! It would encounter a hard to read spot on the disk and start seeking the head and spinning up the disc up and down. It acted like it was programed to open up after a period of time when the disc could not be read, but it would do it while the disc was spinning, and sometimes spinning very fast, only momentarily starting to slow down! Most times the disc would stop in the tray and get scratched and I'd be mad, and a few times it ejected spinning near max speed and the disc would vibrate in the caddy and launch itself across the room or under my desk! This was my familys first "real" computer, a P133 made by a local computer shop.
It's such a pity that Nero has gone to crap. Their software was good, but nowadays you can only use their tools if you buy a ridiculously overpriced subscription plan. Thankfully Roxio still knows how to treat their customers properly
I had a CD-R fail in just a 52x drive in an old compaq way back in the day. It ended up blowing the faceplate on the tray off in two pieces and left me with a nice cut on my shin. Thankfully other than that, all the disc shrapnel and foil confetti from the CD-R managed to stay contained in the drive itself. I'd have probably needed stitches and a new PC if it had been one of those 56x drives instead.
@@zOMGREI I always thought that 52x drives where save. I mean they had 54x 56x and I believe even 60x drives but they where abandoned after a rather short time because of the frequent CD failures and the manufacturers got back to 52 so I thought that they reverted to a safe speed.
On a more serious note, I would guess that this drive happened because Kenwood was trying to develop a CD drive that would not skip in a car. With a high data rate, you could have a smaller buffer and the chances that your CD would skip would be minimized. I'd love to know which purpose was served first.
And speaking audio history, the drive didn't have the older buttons scheme: "Play/Stop", "Next/Prev" buttons. I remember having other CD-ROM drive that have that button but more newer ones drives didn't have that anymore. When its 'obsoleted' and why?
I had a CD (Worms Armageddon game) that "blown up" inside the drive back in the days. It was so bizarre, I was playing the game when suddenly I heard this loud BANG sound and the game froze. I thought it was a bullet that went through the window (it's possible here in Rio de Janeiro), but when I look at the CD drive it was half open and inside laid pieces of the CD. It was probably the game that I played the most back then.
Similar thing happened to me! Only it was a Library loaner audio CD in a 52x CDROM drive :( It's why I don't trust CDROM speeds over 32x. I was able to return the broken CD without incident after explaining that the explosion wrecked my drive :-\
I thought those things no longer happened with more modern drives but i actually had my copy of Final Fantasy XIII break inside my PS3 around 2010. It reminded me of those cheap pirated CDs i used to own as a kid (very common for us latin Americans) but for a full retail 60 dollar modern game!!!. Indeed that's something digital downloads and files eliminate completely
Headphone jacks in optical drives are useless. You can listen to audio CDs with the speakers plugged into the back of your PC. I guess these old style drives were cool way back in the DOS days around the mid 90's and earlier when your PC typically didn't come with a sound card. You could listen to CDs directly from the CD drive itself. I believe this is how it works, but i've never tried it to find out. Today they are useless.
i still use winamp and i see no reason AT ALL to switch to anything else. winamp was made free a couple years ago, and it works just as well as it ever has
Kenwood: "Let's create the most awesome CD-rom the world has ever seen!" Also Kenwood: "Let's make it out of the cheapest materials we can possibly source!"
They did that with Aidio Decks and Amplifiers too (Oh and dont get me started on fibre-optic cable Audio systems - thats another extra-big catering-size can of worms). The kitchen stuff was okay though, until it wasnt.
thats what happened to me a week ago. I found an old CD in my drawer and decided to see what i've put inside it. I used to put random crap inside it when i was a kid. I noticed a small crack in the middle of the CD but i didn't give it a second thought. I put it inside the drive and started exploring the CD. It worked fine. Then i decided to write a zip file with a game just for fun. I set the speed to maximum. 48x speed. It sounded like a jet engine revving. Suddenly i heard a huge explosion and bits and pieces from the drive struck my face. The front of the dvd drive literally exploded and plastic bits where everywhere. The CD had disintegrated into a million pieces. I removed the drive from the PC, cleaned it and now it works fine. But i have to close it manually because the motor mechanism and the button are destroyed. It also looks like part found in the junkyard lol. Im surprised it still works. The drive is from 2008
It couldn't deal with smallest of scratches though ! I sold it, back then I was into ripping any and all audio CDs and running error correction killed the speed.
I also had this drive, and was trying to rip music with it at the time and I remember having the drive for about 2 weeks after buying it retail. I bought it as soon as my local PC store had it in stock, so I had nothing but problems with it, and zero patience lol. So I sold it and moved on. I remember running Nero on it too and it was soooo slow nothing like the hype at the time. I guess I should have stuck it out for some firmware lol, at initial release it was fairly horrific. Thanks for the great videos LGR it's like going back in time lol.
Back in university, around 1997, some guy had a 4x drive and he said he wanted to upgrade to 8x. I remember thinking, What would be the point? You just use it to install software.
I owned this drive and loved it so much it survived three PC upgrades. I thought it was super quiet and was super reliable. That off-color you mention was by design. Mine always stuck out like a sore thumb. Great video.
I had my copy of Final Fantasy XIII break inside of my PS3!! It was kind of nostalgic seeing a disc blown again but i was so pissed off the mess it made in my console. The only game that shattered inside my PC was a cheap pirated game i bought near my school but i had so many of them rendered unreadable by continuos use ^^
I remember that True-X drives got a lot of hype, were expensive, and had reports on forums of drives dying after a couple of months. And then the OEM market was flooded in the early 2000's with affordable CD-R burners and True-X drives were quickly forgotten. I dont know if Kenwood ever made a True-X CD-R burner. Keep up the awesome demonstrations and bringing back memories.
@@williscurry6557 Oooooh, I remember Smart and Friendly, was disappointed when they went out of business :( IIRC I had one of those drives for a while, really liked it
The bloody hell is that at 8:25?Passengers, please observe the fastened seatbelt signs and upright tray icons; We really are about to take off... I kinda hope you got your, um, Earthly, business, taken care of?We probably won't be coming back...
This is what happens if you constantly jam in the tray with your hand instead of using the button. Nothing at first, then rattling and then the tray won't come out and soon it wont move at all.
Wow, LGR's been getting a lot of subs lately. The last time I checked it was 500K and now it's close to 1M! I'm sure it wasn't very long time ago.. That's awesome! BTW: I've had a cd explode in a 56x drive. Not fun, at all.
I built a computer for someone that had a 56x drive in it, and they liked to play those free games that came in cereal boxes for their nieces and nephews. One day "Scrabble" exploded so violently the shards of the disc stuck through the metal case of the CD-ROM drive. It was sort of scary when I took it apart. I replaced it with a DVD drive that had a much lower peak RPM and it was much less sketchy.
Doom 3 Voodoo video got a great amount of exposure via tech and gaming outlets like PC Gamer, which is great because Clint does so much work for the videos in terms of research, filming and editing. In my opinion he should be well beyond the one million threshold.
Wow. :o My disc must've not spun at full speed or something then I'm glad to say. There was just suddenly this horrible sound (don't remember what I was doing when it happened.) After that I tried to eject the drive but it couldn't, so I shut off the pc, took out the drive and tried to pry it open with a knife. I think I got the tray out 1/3 - 1/2 of the way. Little shards of plastic just poured out of the drive. The drive looked just fine on the outside though.
I had an old cd with cracks around where the spindle hub goes in and wanted to back it up before it went to shit so I put it in an HP burner in a gateway and began the copy process... Half way through I heard a gunshot, the CD shattered and blew off the CD drive faceplate with the door plate and unsnapped part of the PC faceplate off. Pulled the drive out and shook all the shards out with it ejected then snapped everything back in and she still worked fine (thank god, it wasn't cheap). 0/10 would not want to be in the same room if one goes off.
Wow! You're right. He has gotten a lot of subs recently. I've been here for a while. I always knee he deserved far more subs than he had. Especially with his quality content and being around for such a long time. Guess he is finally getting the subs he deserves. :) yay! Congrats man!
man, i love watching your vids. you've introduced me to the world of old hardware in a way that get's my mind running. i've got some ide drives from a computer that i had gutted and i found a pretty little gem, an internal zip 100 drive that i believe came out of an apple computer. there is also the floppy drive and i believe the optical drive was dvd. i'll have to go looking through my boxes to find it but man that was cool to have found and even know about
Wow, good job Kenwood! Thats genuinely impressive, especially since theres no false advertising involved whatsoever. If you guys ever get back into PC hardware im certainly goina have a close look at your stuff.
@@paulnoecker1202 I still use Nero today sometimes too. I don't use optical discs nearly as much as I used to, but sometimes I still like to burn discs. I built a new PC earlier this year and even bought a 4K/UHD blu-ray burner for it (though I more often use it for ripping rather than burning).
I spent all my saved up money on a new 16x burner as a young teen, and my computer wasn't fast enough to decompress an mp3 to a CD at that speed, so I was stuck burning audio cd's at 8x. I was disappointed.
volvo09 I burned all my disks at 32x max, despite it being a 52x drive. It took a bit longer but at least I could sit next to it not fearing for my wellbeing.
I remember reading about Kenwood True-X tech at the time, loving the concept, and then never had a chance to actually see/use one in person. Thanks for the video!
I don't. I'd just rip the disk image and run everything from a virtual drive to keep the noise down. Maybe I'd have better memories if I had a slower rpm drive. ;D
I agree. There was something ceremonious about installing something. And the anticipation of getting to play it while you watched the bar fill up slowly. Good times. There's something undeniably hollow to right clicking a game in steam and clicking install. Even if it is 100x more convenient.
Dave Robertson, remember having to hear that disc spin in the drive as you play a game, Because of copy protection. mind you I remember playing games on floppy disks. Nothing better than one disc getting corrupt as you tried to reinstall a game. I miss the DVD discs I like having a hard copy of my computer game that serves as a back up copy. It’s easier than downloading it off of steam anyday, even with a fast connection.
@@everenjohn lol may be true. So the 2008 was best? Coz I have 2008 laptops & desktops which r still quite reliable. Software was still ownable for lifetime.
You can still buy: * All games from GOG.com and own them and keep them on your HDD. * Many programs on DVD and own them. Old Photoshop, for example, like CS6? * Download a lot of free software and own them.
Man, you keep pulling out tech I used to have! I remember having that exact model. Ah, nostalgia... I'll have to check my storage unit, but I'm fairly certain I still have it.
I had two of these. The first one failed just under the year mark and Kenwood actually RMA'ed it without hassle. Then the second one broke after about another year. Then I really realized why A) people talked so much about their failure rate and B) why Kenwood and their beam splitting technology quickly exited from the marketplace. It occurred to me that the big issue with the drive was likely the beam splitting. It's hard enough to keep an optical reader clean enough to properly read a disc (especially in those days). It is likely that it was darn near impossible to not only keep the laser clean, but then all of the components that split and put back together the beam as well. In other words, the failure in my drives may not have been outright mechanical failure at all. But essentially having components that would fail over time due to simple dust. Still, that's a terrible design fault, and clearly Kenwood couldn't keep making these things with that issue. For me, when it worked, it worked well (and quick for a CD-ROM drive). Just had a terrible failure rate.
I may be three years late to respond to your comment, but dust inside the laser assembly has a pretty simple solution: Compressed air and an alcohol damp Q-Tip for the top of the lens. Wasn't rocket science really, it just worked. Beyond that the most common miscellaneous issues we ran across were in the tray mechanism...
Ah, more spinning blades of death that are once again available to the average home user under the guise of a "normal" CD player/drive. But that 56x cd rom drive especially counts here.
Back in the day, I worked in a software company as an intern; everybody had some cheap 56x drive in their towers.. all of them mounted in a top slot and the towers set up on their desk. One day, one of the devs was installing something from a very cheap CD-R and the disk shattered, tore off the faceplate and spewed shrapnel everywhere -- including the guy's face. He was lucky he was wearing glasses as a piece of disk cratered his glasses' lens; without them on he would have lost an eye. Of course, everybody moved their computers down under desks after that. Few days later, a disk exploded in the computer I was working on, but all I got for that was just torn pants.
I had a 56X Kenwood. I gave it to a friend last year for free since I use DVD drives for my retro machines. I kinda miss it but DVD drives read everything I throw at them.
I had the 52x version and the main thing I liked about it was how quiet it was and the really fast seek times compared to other higher than 32X+ speed drives of the day.
The Sega 32x didn't use CD's at all, it used cartridges. There were a few(Very few) games that did use both the Sega CD and the 32x at the same time though. They called it the 32x because it was supposed to be "double" the processing speed of the original 16 bit system and was Sega's way of providing a cheaper alternative to play 32 bit games...but we all know just how well that worked out LOL. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32X
Quite amazing to see a product that actually performs in real world as advertised on box. It is too bad to see some viewers upset at you for reviewing old tech equipment. Why not? Some people were never able to acquire some of this equipment, but with your reviews are able to see what we missed out on and if it was even worth the price back then. Thanks.
A lot of 52x - 56x CD-ROM drives require you to hold down the eject button for a second or two when you put a CD in to allow them to run at full speed. They will usually only run at 48x if you don't. This was because at speeds faster than 48x, cheap or damaged CDs (or even good ones sometimes) had a rather unfortunate tendency to explode.
Great to see this drive back. I've had one in my system for years, next to a plextor cd writer and a pioneer dvd reader, forming the holy trinity of optical drives. Can't recall where exaclty I got it from as I'm pretty sure it was a few years after release and for a bottom price.
Great and very interesting video once again. :) Clint never fails to entertain me and I assume a lot of other people too. 3 x hurrah for him 🙆♂️🙆♂️🙆♂️
I bought one of these, too. Except mine had a SCSI interface and went in my Win2k box. My experience mirrored many other's. Worked great right out of the box but as time went on it became more and more finicky until it wouldn't read anything. I paired mine with a Plextor CDR and it was a KILLER combo for audio production. I was a bad-ass with my Kenwood CD rig... for about 6 months. (Now, unrelated, I want a LGR case badge :-)
I wouldn't want to put one of those in a high speed drive (or any, for that matter). Safer and more effective (even though less convenient) to open the drive up and manually clean the lens! .. I don't think I ever owned a cleaner disc. ☺
In October 2009 there were plenty quite affordable CD recordable drives at much slower speeds. The first recordable DVD recordable drives had appeared then but were very expensive. The typical 52X CD ROM drones appeared a little later. The 52X were true 52X CD drives. The 72X was rotating the disk much slower and was using the multiple laser technique which was good for large files but less slower for multiple smaller files.
I remember being intrigued by this unit and its claimed transfer rates that stretched credulity. I ended up going with the premium plexwriter at the time based on its reputation for rock-solid reliability, but here I am in 2019 just learning that the kenwood actually delivered as promised, and I am amazed!
"It's effectively just a CD-rooom"... I keep asking myself why I'm subscribed to your channel, because I'm SO not into 90's IBM compatibles... But then I see a thumbnail of a frigging gray internal CD-ROM drive and click it, just for the pure ridiculousness of making a video about such a thing. And I love every bit of it :) Stay gray, man!
Kenwood was and still is my favorite since the early 90's. My stereo receiver from 1994 is still being used in 2020. I never turn it off and it has so much power.
When I worked at Fry's and a small computer store (both in the late 90s) we used to sell "100x" drives. They were actually 24x drives, but you installed some kind of included caching program that allocated a certain amount of RAM to buffer the drive. I do not recall it being noticable but I didn't run benchmarks either. Might be something to look for in a future oddware episode.
that does make sense - though it seems disingenuous to call them 100x drives when the same software should work with any drive. Would have been much cooler to see that kind of cache implemented inside the drive.
There was a massive discrepancy is drive quality in the 90's. I remember having a brand name drive, Philips I think at 8 or 16x which kept out performing generic drives well into the 40x range until, sadly it died. It would also be interesting to see how original matsushita drives perform against equivalently spec'ed cheaper options. I also remember a project from 1999 where I fitted 4 SCSI drives in a hands on server for a school. Those drives were not especially ludicrously fast on paper, but in practice these beasts where crazy fast. I think they were plextor drives.
Reminds me of the day I got my ALPS 4-deck CD-ROM 1x tower for sharing BBS shareware. lol. Sure beat swapping floppies! Had a super 10MB HD. Now I have LightScribe and super blue-ray rewriting things.. but never actually use them. haha
Bacon420, I do use CD/DVD drives with some frequency, mostly for ripping CDs to iTunes or to watch a movie from the library or my personal collection. I need to get myself a Blu-ray drive to support reading newer discs, and I plan to use Blu-ray Discs for long term backups as well.
Back in the early 90s it was also common for offices to have a CD-ROM server. Basically a PC with several CD-ROM drives with software on them. Cos HDDs was still very expensive.
And so, im sitting here in 2018 and watching a 13 min video about a cd-rom drive... what a time
what a time to be alive
Better yet I just hit eBay looking for 1
Not even a dvd rom
2019 baby!
Because the technology behind would have been astonishing if the media itself was not going to die.
"You plug it in, and things work... unless they don't." I think every computer guy in history can relate.
Lol demo of codename Memphis
Agreed. Even when you think you're good with computers there's always a new issue that pops up. It's an endless struggle of troubleshooting.
Yesterday I thought my gaming computer was b0rken because Windows 10 was freezing halfway into boot, but turns out it was a wifi card causing hardware problems. That card couldn't get any more dead.
It just works
Every computer girl can relate also 😉
1. Let the disc spin up to full speed
2. Eject the disc using pinhole eject procedure
3. ????
4. PROFIT!!!
Chopped off head *lol*
The pinhole eject only works when the power is off, otherwise the drive holds the tray closed. Be cool to see it run with the top cover off though, next to that noisy 56x drive.
myc0p *beyblade beyblade let ‘er rip!*
Every computer guy always had a paperclip on hand just in case they had to use the pinhole ejector. What a time to be alive.
@@CaffeinatedTech That is absolutely not true. It works. It's an EMERGENCY eject, to be used only in emergencies. Might be a bit harder when the drive is spinning though.
Ahhh, I remember when CD Drives sounded like a jet engine going off
You can emulate the experience nowadays with a Macbook Pro running Docker :D
Ps4 fan:am i a joke to you?
Admittedly the sound in the Ps4 is just fan/cooling system.going overdrive when all the cores of the APU get used to the max, not the bluray unit
>The Wii U playing Xenoblade X on Not Blu-Ray
I miss it, you knew something was happening
The true power of the Kenwood is the error correction. Because of the different angles of the beams most scratches could be read without slowing down. We needed this drive becausebit was the only one that could handle on-the-fly CD copy with the Plextor 12x CD Burner. All other ROM drives would empty the Burners cache and mess up the CD by 90% chance.
holy shit those old SCSI Sony burners did the same thing if they were paired to anything less than a 52x
I remember that!
I just had a flashback of starting at the cache gauge like this:
😥
🙏
Good times!
we made burners with all pionere ide kit I think it was at the time, no issues at all
Back in about 2000, we were all working away in the office when we heard this loud bang. After searching around the room we discovered that one of the guys PC was running a game CD, can't remember which game now, but the tray tried to eject whilst the drive was running at full speed. The CD was shattered, shards of it managed to penetrate the drive case. Pretty wild to witness a PC try to weaponise itself.
Was he fired without severance payment?
rip in peace the guy's game disc
roskelld The Matrix Has You.
I had a drive that would do that! It would encounter a hard to read spot on the disk and start seeking the head and spinning up the disc up and down. It acted like it was programed to open up after a period of time when the disc could not be read, but it would do it while the disc was spinning, and sometimes spinning very fast, only momentarily starting to slow down! Most times the disc would stop in the tray and get scratched and I'd be mad, and a few times it ejected spinning near max speed and the disc would vibrate in the caddy and launch itself across the room or under my desk! This was my familys first "real" computer, a P133 made by a local computer shop.
It was skynet gaining consciousness.
8:07 you know D2 was HUUUGE back then when companies released firmware aimed at that game.
man. the word Nero sure does bring back memories
It's such a pity that Nero has gone to crap. Their software was good, but nowadays you can only use their tools if you buy a ridiculously overpriced subscription plan. Thankfully Roxio still knows how to treat their customers properly
71.99X Alright. Color me impressed. That's some accurate claims.
So, sexual intercouse - - you, me bottle of wine and some joints?
Seriously. Super impressive!
Precise*
Old IDE drives at a boardwalk vendor: selling CSELs by the seashore. :P
Had a copy of C&C generals explode in a 52X drive! The drive heroically contained the shrapnel.
Did it break the drive?
Maybe if you had bought the GLA soldiers some new shoes this wouldn't have happened
its ok.. it was only generals.. kinda makes me want to attach my copy of generals to the angle grinder lol
Same here, but with Worms Armageddon :(
Loaded with US quality!
Only the brave have that 56x spinning up at face hieght..........
This is an epic episode man.
I had a CD-R fail in just a 52x drive in an old compaq way back in the day. It ended up blowing the faceplate on the tray off in two pieces and left me with a nice cut on my shin. Thankfully other than that, all the disc shrapnel and foil confetti from the CD-R managed to stay contained in the drive itself. I'd have probably needed stitches and a new PC if it had been one of those 56x drives instead.
@@zOMGREI I always thought that 52x drives where save. I mean they had 54x 56x and I believe even 60x drives but they where abandoned after a rather short time because of the frequent CD failures and the manufacturers got back to 52 so I thought that they reverted to a safe speed.
@@rfvtgbzhn 52x was generally safe, but a lot of early CD-Rs weren't manufactured particularly well and could still pop in a 52x.
Oh the days of CD-ROM drives speeding, then slowing down, then speeding up, then slowing down.....and being slower than drivers that stay constant.
I'm surprised Kenwood didn't offer a wood-grain version given their audio history.
On a more serious note, I would guess that this drive happened because Kenwood was trying to develop a CD drive that would not skip in a car. With a high data rate, you could have a smaller buffer and the chances that your CD would skip would be minimized.
I'd love to know which purpose was served first.
Also missing the slot drive, I think those were panasonics.
Not that bad, actually ;)
BAHAHAHAA!!! I still have a Kenwood clock radio that has the wood grain on the top of it! Nice observation! +1 your comment!!
And speaking audio history, the drive didn't have the older buttons scheme: "Play/Stop", "Next/Prev" buttons.
I remember having other CD-ROM drive that have that button but more newer ones drives didn't have that anymore.
When its 'obsoleted' and why?
I had a CD (Worms Armageddon game) that "blown up" inside the drive back in the days. It was so bizarre, I was playing the game when suddenly I heard this loud BANG sound and the game froze. I thought it was a bullet that went through the window (it's possible here in Rio de Janeiro), but when I look at the CD drive it was half open and inside laid pieces of the CD. It was probably the game that I played the most back then.
That's what happens when you overplay a CD-Rom hahaha.
A stray bullet? Man, Rio must have been a hardcore place to live in.
Similar thing happened to me! Only it was a Library loaner audio CD in a 52x CDROM drive :( It's why I don't trust CDROM speeds over 32x.
I was able to return the broken CD without incident after explaining that the explosion wrecked my drive :-\
I thought those things no longer happened with more modern drives but i actually had my copy of Final Fantasy XIII break inside my PS3 around 2010. It reminded me of those cheap pirated CDs i used to own as a kid (very common for us latin Americans) but for a full retail 60 dollar modern game!!!.
Indeed that's something digital downloads and files eliminate completely
Sure that's not over-autoplay?
Apple wasn't the first to get rid of the headphone jack, computer disk drives were.
Mattf14 disc drive*
Headphone jacks in optical drives are useless. You can listen to audio CDs with the speakers plugged into the back of your PC. I guess these old style drives were cool way back in the DOS days around the mid 90's and earlier when your PC typically didn't come with a sound card. You could listen to CDs directly from the CD drive itself. I believe this is how it works, but i've never tried it to find out. Today they are useless.
Heck yes.
Boy do I miss those days...
I've heard of fast CDRom drives, but this's a disc eater!
Uh Oh There She Goes...
Watch out boy, she'll chew you up!
@@BlindLibrary some these drives spun up so fast discs literally shattered.
i love your videos and channel. brings back memories i couldn't get back otherwise. please keep this awesome work coming. thank you :)
Wianmp, it really whips the llama's ass
I'm still using the Winamp app on every phone I get. it is just the best...even if I can't shuffle the playlists
I don't even remember them using that slogan, I feel old even if I'm seventeen! (8 September 2000)
It played the first time you installed older versions of Winamp =)
Then it would make sheep sound. I remember for hours trying to get the dancing girl to work
th-cam.com/video/cKqKrH0O9yg/w-d-xo.html
Your retro nostalgia is so comfy.. Carry on!
Nero, WinAMP, WIN98...so many warm fuzzy feelings! lol
i still use winamp and i see no reason AT ALL to switch to anything else. winamp was made free a couple years ago, and it works just as well as it ever has
_"WINAMP. "It really whips the Llama's ass!" BAAAAAA!"_
lol, and mirc, ICQ. so many sketchy stories.
Wait...it wasn't always free?
Kenwood: "Let's create the most awesome CD-rom the world has ever seen!"
Also Kenwood: "Let's make it out of the cheapest materials we can possibly source!"
@Wotzinator why though?
if you mean the noisy cd tray... some expensive CD IDE/SCSI drive have the skate loading tray :)
So, no... this CD drive isn't cheap.
@@snyggmikael because people like low price high performance
They did that with Aidio Decks and Amplifiers too (Oh and dont get me started on fibre-optic cable Audio systems - thats another extra-big catering-size can of worms). The kitchen stuff was okay though, until it wasnt.
I remember my dad playing a computer game in the early 2000s, and hearing the CD explode.
thats what happened to me a week ago. I found an old CD in my drawer and decided to see what i've put inside it. I used to put random crap inside it when i was a kid. I noticed a small crack in the middle of the CD but i didn't give it a second thought. I put it inside the drive and started exploring the CD. It worked fine. Then i decided to write a zip file with a game just for fun. I set the speed to maximum. 48x speed.
It sounded like a jet engine revving. Suddenly i heard a huge explosion and bits and pieces from the drive struck my face. The front of the dvd drive literally exploded and plastic bits where everywhere. The CD had disintegrated into a million pieces. I removed the drive from the PC, cleaned it and now it works fine. But i have to close it manually because the motor mechanism and the button are destroyed. It also looks like part found in the junkyard lol. Im surprised it still works. The drive is from 2008
@@dieselgeezer18 Damn
skibidi bop mm dada
Gta3 exploded for me. Good times
@@dieselgeezer18 same thing happened to me, I don't remember what game it was but I doubt I had the desire to get another copy of it🤷🏻♂️
I had this drive. It was amazing. Best part it was low noise compared to normal cd drives.
Had one as well. It lasted a good long while, with the loss of IDE being the only thing that obsoleted it for me.
It couldn't deal with smallest of scratches though ! I sold it, back then I was into ripping any and all audio CDs and running error correction killed the speed.
I also had this drive, and was trying to rip music with it at the time and I remember having the drive for about 2 weeks after buying it retail. I bought it as soon as my local PC store had it in stock, so I had nothing but problems with it, and zero patience lol. So I sold it and moved on. I remember running Nero on it too and it was soooo slow nothing like the hype at the time. I guess I should have stuck it out for some firmware lol, at initial release it was fairly horrific.
Thanks for the great videos LGR it's like going back in time lol.
I had this drive too. It lasted for quite a few years before it just stopped working
I came here to mention that mine was super quite, but you already had said so. Agree 100%
WinAmp visualizer... Talk about nostalgia.
I used to love using that. It was a big selling point of using WinAmp for me. lol, or at least a nice bonus.
I just used it ‘cause it was free. As was every song I ever wanted (thanks Napster!).
Nostalgia?
I STILL use WinAmp as my go-to audio player
I... still use Winamp. It's simply the best music player out there and uses less than 50MB of RAM (and ~0% CPU usage). AS AN MP3 PLAYER SHOULD.
I miss Winamp. real bummer when they quit development. I had it on my Phone up until then.
Wow, I had totally forgotten that at one time I cared how fast my CD-ROM drive was.
Back in university, around 1997, some guy had a 4x drive and he said he wanted to upgrade to 8x. I remember thinking, What would be the point? You just use it to install software.
Indeed, for some time people even used CD read speed limiter software like CD Throttle.
I owned this drive and loved it so much it survived three PC upgrades. I thought it was super quiet and was super reliable. That off-color you mention was by design. Mine always stuck out like a sore thumb. Great video.
I had a disc blow up in a 52x drive, ironically it was Diablo 1, it was so loud like a bomb going off next to my head.
RIGHT! I had a cd explode in the cd drive too. It was abnormally loud. It even kinda chipped the cd tray front housing.
I had a copy of Microsoft Office explode in a 52 X drive.
I had my copy of Final Fantasy XIII break inside of my PS3!!
It was kind of nostalgic seeing a disc blown again but i was so pissed off the mess it made in my console. The only game that shattered inside my PC was a cheap pirated game i bought near my school but i had so many of them rendered unreadable by continuos use ^^
That'd make a Hell of a room impulse response to use in Foobar2000/similar software.
I remember that True-X drives got a lot of hype, were expensive, and had reports on forums of drives dying after a couple of months. And then the OEM market was flooded in the early 2000's with affordable CD-R burners and True-X drives were quickly forgotten. I dont know if Kenwood ever made a True-X CD-R burner. Keep up the awesome demonstrations and bringing back memories.
$229 Smart & Friendly 4x4x24X From Computer Renaissance.
@@williscurry6557 Oooooh, I remember Smart and Friendly, was disappointed when they went out of business :(
IIRC I had one of those drives for a while, really liked it
The bloody hell is that at 8:25?Passengers, please observe the fastened seatbelt signs and upright tray icons;
We really are about to take off...
I kinda hope you got your, um, Earthly, business, taken care of?We probably won't be coming back...
Haha
Man you were really in your element here. Loved this video!
"It's amazing in every way!"
*rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggg*
"ok, maybe not that way"
Hell no, That sound is pure nostalgia. I miss the old kenwood.
I'm sorry, but I just loved the comedic timing on that XD
fascinating
well, beast of a cd rom needs to show dominance while ejecting
This is what happens if you constantly jam in the tray with your hand instead of using the button. Nothing at first, then rattling and then the tray won't come out and soon it wont move at all.
Wow, LGR's been getting a lot of subs lately. The last time I checked it was 500K and now it's close to 1M! I'm sure it wasn't very long time ago.. That's awesome!
BTW: I've had a cd explode in a 56x drive. Not fun, at all.
I built a computer for someone that had a 56x drive in it, and they liked to play those free games that came in cereal boxes for their nieces and nephews. One day "Scrabble" exploded so violently the shards of the disc stuck through the metal case of the CD-ROM drive. It was sort of scary when I took it apart. I replaced it with a DVD drive that had a much lower peak RPM and it was much less sketchy.
Doom 3 Voodoo video got a great amount of exposure via tech and gaming outlets like PC Gamer, which is great because Clint does so much work for the videos in terms of research, filming and editing. In my opinion he should be well beyond the one million threshold.
Wow. :o My disc must've not spun at full speed or something then I'm glad to say. There was just suddenly this horrible sound (don't remember what I was doing when it happened.) After that I tried to eject the drive but it couldn't, so I shut off the pc, took out the drive and tried to pry it open with a knife. I think I got the tray out 1/3 - 1/2 of the way. Little shards of plastic just poured out of the drive. The drive looked just fine on the outside though.
I had an old cd with cracks around where the spindle hub goes in and wanted to back it up before it went to shit so I put it in an HP burner in a gateway and began the copy process... Half way through I heard a gunshot, the CD shattered and blew off the CD drive faceplate with the door plate and unsnapped part of the PC faceplate off. Pulled the drive out and shook all the shards out with it ejected then snapped everything back in and she still worked fine (thank god, it wasn't cheap). 0/10 would not want to be in the same room if one goes off.
Wow! You're right. He has gotten a lot of subs recently. I've been here for a while. I always knee he deserved far more subs than he had. Especially with his quality content and being around for such a long time. Guess he is finally getting the subs he deserves. :) yay! Congrats man!
man, i love watching your vids. you've introduced me to the world of old hardware in a way that get's my mind running. i've got some ide drives from a computer that i had gutted and i found a pretty little gem, an internal zip 100 drive that i believe came out of an apple computer. there is also the floppy drive and i believe the optical drive was dvd. i'll have to go looking through my boxes to find it but man that was cool to have found and even know about
Wow, good job Kenwood! Thats genuinely impressive, especially since theres no false advertising involved whatsoever.
If you guys ever get back into PC hardware im certainly goina have a close look at your stuff.
Diablo II, Nero, Winamp. oh!! what a good time.. :')
Same here. That Nero interface!
still use nero today
Jason Davis really? I deprecated optical media years ago.
The thing I liked about Nero was you could fine tune the bitrate until it filled your cd-r exactly - no wasted space.
@@paulnoecker1202 I still use Nero today sometimes too. I don't use optical discs nearly as much as I used to, but sometimes I still like to burn discs. I built a new PC earlier this year and even bought a 4K/UHD blu-ray burner for it (though I more often use it for ripping rather than burning).
I remember how bad I wanted one of these back in the day. Hard to believe it's been 20 years!
Hey! Hope you're doing well man :)
I spent all my saved up money on a new 16x burner as a young teen, and my computer wasn't fast enough to decompress an mp3 to a CD at that speed, so I was stuck burning audio cd's at 8x. I was disappointed.
volvo09 I burned all my disks at 32x max, despite it being a 52x drive. It took a bit longer but at least I could sit next to it not fearing for my wellbeing.
many nights spent watching the winamp milkdrop. love your videos man so much nostalgia
so happy i found this channel. pure retro goodness
11:02 insert obligatory "It's over 9000!" joke here. lol
I remember reading about Kenwood True-X tech at the time, loving the concept, and then never had a chance to actually see/use one in person. Thanks for the video!
just like the products you showcase, your videos are timeless
Thank you for this video, and every other video that you have made.
I'm amazed with such technology. Thanks so much for your work, LGR!
I kinda miss installing games from CD-ROMs.
I don't. I'd just rip the disk image and run everything from a virtual drive to keep the noise down. Maybe I'd have better memories if I had a slower rpm drive. ;D
I agree. There was something ceremonious about installing something. And the anticipation of getting to play it while you watched the bar fill up slowly.
Good times. There's something undeniably hollow to right clicking a game in steam and clicking install. Even if it is 100x more convenient.
And also the whole drama if progress bars sticks and furious cd cleaning begins! . And after cleaning the cd it finally installs! You feel great !
Dave Robertson, remember having to hear that disc spin in the drive as you play a game, Because of copy protection.
mind you I remember playing games on floppy disks. Nothing better than one disc getting corrupt as you tried to reinstall a game.
I miss the DVD discs I like having a hard copy of my computer game that serves as a back up copy. It’s easier than downloading it off of steam anyday, even with a fast connection.
what? you do realize millenials are born from 1984 - 2001
Back when you could buy software and own it for the rest for your life.
I suddenly want live in 1998 again...as an adult this time.
I'll pass on that, with shitty components that you cannot rely working with each other, screw that era
@@everenjohn lol may be true. So the 2008 was best? Coz I have 2008 laptops & desktops which r still quite reliable. Software was still ownable for lifetime.
@@therealb888 Well I agree on that haha
You can still buy:
* All games from GOG.com and own them and keep them on your HDD.
* Many programs on DVD and own them. Old Photoshop, for example, like CS6?
* Download a lot of free software and own them.
Been there done that.
Great video! Great find. Really awesome LGR Oddware.
Man, you keep pulling out tech I used to have! I remember having that exact model. Ah, nostalgia...
I'll have to check my storage unit, but I'm fairly certain I still have it.
next up: slowest CD ROM.
1/8th speed
my CD ROM is the slowest, also close to being broken.
that one is easy, I remember 1x and 2x cdrom readers, playing MadDog on it.
That's the HP parallel port cd RW. LOL Those really sucked.
Blade0427 then find a Kenwood True-X then!
I had two of these. The first one failed just under the year mark and Kenwood actually RMA'ed it without hassle. Then the second one broke after about another year. Then I really realized why A) people talked so much about their failure rate and B) why Kenwood and their beam splitting technology quickly exited from the marketplace.
It occurred to me that the big issue with the drive was likely the beam splitting. It's hard enough to keep an optical reader clean enough to properly read a disc (especially in those days). It is likely that it was darn near impossible to not only keep the laser clean, but then all of the components that split and put back together the beam as well. In other words, the failure in my drives may not have been outright mechanical failure at all. But essentially having components that would fail over time due to simple dust. Still, that's a terrible design fault, and clearly Kenwood couldn't keep making these things with that issue.
For me, when it worked, it worked well (and quick for a CD-ROM drive). Just had a terrible failure rate.
That's an interesting point about dust. I could see that being an issue and difficult to clean without breaking the drive.
I may be three years late to respond to your comment, but dust inside the laser assembly has a pretty simple solution: Compressed air and an alcohol damp Q-Tip for the top of the lens. Wasn't rocket science really, it just worked.
Beyond that the most common miscellaneous issues we ran across were in the tray mechanism...
Discovered this channel and it tells some stories of my youth... :) Nice
The sound that 56x drive was incredibly nostalgic for me.
Ah, more spinning blades of death that are once again available to the average home user under the guise of a "normal" CD player/drive.
But that 56x cd rom drive especially counts here.
Back in the day, I worked in a software company as an intern; everybody had some cheap 56x drive in their towers.. all of them mounted in a top slot and the towers set up on their desk. One day, one of the devs was installing something from a very cheap CD-R and the disk shattered, tore off the faceplate and spewed shrapnel everywhere -- including the guy's face. He was lucky he was wearing glasses as a piece of disk cratered his glasses' lens; without them on he would have lost an eye.
Of course, everybody moved their computers down under desks after that. Few days later, a disk exploded in the computer I was working on, but all I got for that was just torn pants.
...can't imagine that would have been cost-effective had I not been around to work for (essentially) free.
new x48 drive blew up one of my KOTOR disks :( it was still sticking out of the back when returning it to the shop :)
I once had a cd explode in one of my old drives, made a good maraca though.
Thank you mr LGR, that was some sweet sweet nostalgia moments!
Great vid, Clint!
RAWR Gimme your disk. RAAAAWR I'm eating your disk.
I had a 56X Kenwood. I gave it to a friend last year for free since I use DVD drives for my retro machines. I kinda miss it but DVD drives read everything I throw at them.
JohnnyNismo Begone, foul traitor!
Lol I have one of the (very few) Blu-ray burners. Works just fine for CDs and dvds
Demonslayer20111 Me too!!! I have a Asus BW-12D1S-U paired with an awesome PC which I can throw anything at....
I don't know how you did it, but you made me very impressed at how fast this old drive reads. Cool video!
Thanks for the nostalgic memories that resurfaced while watching this! :)
(I had one, it was awesome)
11:02 Vegeta! What does the scouter say about his burst transfer rate?
IT'S OVER 900O!
Best CD-Drive i had was an ASUS 52x. Buffer and Correction was INSANE. it played even deadly scratch Discs.
Best Burner was a Plextor, as usual
This video was awesome.. back in memory lane! Good job. Never seen Windows 98 work so fast by the way!
The 56X drive whirl up. Oooooh boy. That's one of those ultra-specific computer noises that immediately just waves nostalgia on ya.
I had the 52x version and the main thing I liked about it was how quiet it was and the really fast seek times compared to other higher than 32X+ speed drives of the day.
macmacox
It just hit me why Sega called the Genesis/Megadrive addon the 32X.
It wasn't a 32x drive - those were years away. 32x was an extension to support 32-bit processing.
The Sega 32x didn't use CD's at all, it used cartridges. There were a few(Very few) games that did use both the Sega CD and the 32x at the same time though. They called it the 32x because it was supposed to be "double" the processing speed of the original 16 bit system and was Sega's way of providing a cheaper alternative to play 32 bit games...but we all know just how well that worked out LOL. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32X
"Just slides into the... 2nd slot down, screws in tightly" You and your innuendos Clint, honestly...
Quite amazing to see a product that actually performs in real world as advertised on box. It is too bad to see some viewers upset at you for reviewing old tech equipment. Why not? Some people were never able to acquire some of this equipment, but with your reviews are able to see what we missed out on and if it was even worth the price back then. Thanks.
Glad you mentioned the firmware part :) I worked in the computer store business back in the late 90s and early 2000s... these drives, hah!
Monday and Friday are the 2 best days of the week because of LGR
A lot of 52x - 56x CD-ROM drives require you to hold down the eject button for a second or two when you put a CD in to allow them to run at full speed. They will usually only run at 48x if you don't. This was because at speeds faster than 48x, cheap or damaged CDs (or even good ones sometimes) had a rather unfortunate tendency to explode.
Man I love these old hardware videos, this stuff is legendary
Great to see this drive back. I've had one in my system for years, next to a plextor cd writer and a pioneer dvd reader, forming the holy trinity of optical drives. Can't recall where exaclty I got it from as I'm pretty sure it was a few years after release and for a bottom price.
Damn, Im sold. I wish I could get this stoked on new hardwire.
It is a new year 2019 and I am watching a movie about old almost 20 years old CD-ROM Drive. Oh lord.
Great and very interesting video once again. :)
Clint never fails to entertain me and I assume a lot of other people too. 3 x hurrah for him 🙆♂️🙆♂️🙆♂️
Great video! :>
I’m pooping on company time watching your amazing videos
I bought one of these, too. Except mine had a SCSI interface and went in my Win2k box. My experience mirrored many other's. Worked great right out of the box but as time went on it became more and more finicky until it wouldn't read anything. I paired mine with a Plextor CDR and it was a KILLER combo for audio production. I was a bad-ass with my Kenwood CD rig... for about 6 months.
(Now, unrelated, I want a LGR case badge :-)
That music in the background, awesome fit ^^
Damn, I had one of those! Omg you dig up everything :)
I just remembered I had one of those cd lens cleaner disc. Good old times!
I wouldn't want to put one of those in a high speed drive (or any, for that matter). Safer and more effective (even though less convenient) to open the drive up and manually clean the lens! .. I don't think I ever owned a cleaner disc. ☺
I did not get it in a box
I did get it with all the docs
I enjoyed this video. Thanks!
Very interesting video! Thank!
Shoddy Kenwood hardware? Electronics/Software seem solid with updated firmware. I don't expect that thing to last with any decent use. Great review.
In October 2009 there were plenty quite affordable CD recordable drives at much slower speeds. The first recordable DVD recordable drives had appeared then but were very expensive.
The typical 52X CD ROM drones appeared a little later.
The 52X were true 52X CD drives.
The 72X was rotating the disk much slower and was using the multiple laser technique which was good for large files but less slower for multiple smaller files.
I remember being intrigued by this unit and its claimed transfer rates that stretched credulity. I ended up going with the premium plexwriter at the time based on its reputation for rock-solid reliability, but here I am in 2019 just learning that the kenwood actually delivered as promised, and I am amazed!
"It's effectively just a CD-rooom"... I keep asking myself why I'm subscribed to your channel, because I'm SO not into 90's IBM compatibles... But then I see a thumbnail of a frigging gray internal CD-ROM drive and click it, just for the pure ridiculousness of making a video about such a thing. And I love every bit of it :)
Stay gray, man!
My kenwood spins faster. It's a blender
What do you think they did with the unsold CD drives?
;)
@@Abdega LOL :D
19 years later, it's time to hold Kenwood's feet to the fire.
This is a great series. Brings back a lot of gaming memories
Kenwood was and still is my favorite since the early 90's. My stereo receiver from 1994 is still being used in 2020. I never turn it off and it has so much power.
*UP TO 11,000RPM!*
_Muffled Eurobeat starts playing in the distance_
It goes to 11!
...and It's Over 9,000! :D
Running in the nineties...
You can go up to 11 000 *Bunta style*
The C64 fan in me loves how you use Kabel Black for titling :)
I had one of these. I remember thinking it looked really cool next to the Soundblaster Audigy input bay thingy I had at the time. LGR is awesome!
OMG Yes. I remember. That drive was so popular but i had the yamaha f1 and i loved it so didn't change for the kenwood
When I worked at Fry's and a small computer store (both in the late 90s) we used to sell "100x" drives. They were actually 24x drives, but you installed some kind of included caching program that allocated a certain amount of RAM to buffer the drive. I do not recall it being noticable but I didn't run benchmarks either. Might be something to look for in a future oddware episode.
I miss Fry's so much. Such a staple here in the Bay Area.
that does make sense - though it seems disingenuous to call them 100x drives when the same software should work with any drive. Would have been much cooler to see that kind of cache implemented inside the drive.
There was a massive discrepancy is drive quality in the 90's. I remember having a brand name drive, Philips I think at 8 or 16x which kept out performing generic drives well into the 40x range until, sadly it died.
It would also be interesting to see how original matsushita drives perform against equivalently spec'ed cheaper options.
I also remember a project from 1999 where I fitted 4 SCSI drives in a hands on server for a school. Those drives were not especially ludicrously fast on paper, but in practice these beasts where crazy fast. I think they were plextor drives.
I don’t understand what either of you are saying. Wish I did though.
Billable, it's nostalgia!.. That is what this is!
You need to nerd up, Billable. ;3
The Mockracy I’m clearly a nerd in other ways. I was alive during this time too but just getting into tech.
Diggnuts I remember my old Phillips CD Writer came with a booklet covering extensive technical details of the technology itself.
Wow that drive is truly impressive. I had a Sony CRX230AD (52x read and write), burning a full CD in a couple of minutes was amazing.
When that 56x spooled up, I was expecting the Captain to speak on the PA informing of us that we will begin to taxi shortly.
Reminds me of the day I got my ALPS 4-deck CD-ROM 1x tower for sharing BBS shareware. lol. Sure beat swapping floppies! Had a super 10MB HD. Now I have LightScribe and super blue-ray rewriting things.. but never actually use them. haha
Bacon420, I do use CD/DVD drives with some frequency, mostly for ripping CDs to iTunes or to watch a movie from the library or my personal collection. I need to get myself a Blu-ray drive to support reading newer discs, and I plan to use Blu-ray Discs for long term backups as well.
I use BRs for backup for a few years and for now, its working nicely. Less discs and i hope the same lifespan
Labelflash > LightScribe
damn that's awesome lol!
and yeah, I thought optical was the future but I guess it's gonna need a hell of a breakthrough at this point
Back in the early 90s it was also common for offices to have a CD-ROM server. Basically a PC with several CD-ROM drives with software on them. Cos HDDs was still very expensive.
Is there any DVDRW drive model that has similar technology (or has proportional performance) and can be found on the market nowadays?
Victor Campos I’d love to know this. Hopefully someone uses this tech for Blu-Ray.
@@HotStunna80 actually there is. its called BD-RE and BD-RE DL. why is double layered blu ray but the double DVD+R DL does not?
@@janchristianursuaaguilar7434 I believe the OP was talking about the faster parallel read technology. Not RW discs in general.
Sony's BD-R descendant tech for replacing tape in enterprise backup uses iirc 2~4 beams per side. But they seem to be able to burn at that speed...
Had this drive back in the day. Loved it.
Thank you for these thirteen minutes