The first generation of single-speed CD-ROM drives were based on the design of audio CD drives, employing constant linear velocity (CLV) technology to spin a disc at the same speed as an audio CD which, with error correction, meant 150 … [Read more...]
CD-ROM CAV
CLV remained the dominant CD-ROM technology until Pioneer, the first with quad-speed when most only had single, skipped six- and eight-speed entirely in favour of the new ten-speed speed technology employed by its DR-U10X drive, launched in … [Read more...]
CD-ROM Applications
Then there's the question of which applications actually benefit from a faster CD-ROM drive. Most multimedia titles are optimised for double or, at best, quad-speed drives. If video is recorded to play back in real time at a 300 KBps sustained … [Read more...]
CD-ROM Interfaces
CD-ROM drives have three main connections on the back: power, audio out to a sound card and a data interface. These days it is increasingly common to find CD-ROM drives with an IDE data interface, which in theory can be connected to the IDE … [Read more...]
CD-ROM DMA vs. PIO Mode
Traditionally, CD-ROM drives have used Programmable Input Output (PIO) rather than Direct Memory Access (DMA) for data transfer. This was favoured for the earlier designs because hardware implementation is simpler and … [Read more...]
CD-ROM TrueX Technology
Based on the aim of enabling users to run application direct from CD without first cacheing to the hard disk drive, Zen Research's TrueX technology takes a different route to increasing the performance of CD-ROM drives - addressing data … [Read more...]
CD-ROM Digital Audio
On vinyl and audio cassettes, the audio waveform is recorded as an analogue signal. Therefore any imperfections will be heard as noise (hiss) or other defects. To reduce these defects, CDs use digital techniques, storing samples as numbers. … [Read more...]
CD-ROM Operations
Apart from far more sophisticated error-checking techniques, the innards of a CD-ROM drive are pretty much the same as those used in CD audio players. Data is stored in the same way on all CDs. The information is stored in sequential 2KB … [Read more...]
CD-ROM The Disc
The basic CD-ROM (Compact Disc - Read Only Memory) is 120mm in diameter and is basically a 1.2mm sandwich of three coatings: a back layer of clear polycarbonate plastic, a thin sheet of aluminium and a lacquer coating to protect the disc … [Read more...]
CD-ROM Manufacturing
The term premastering is often used quite broadly, to refer to all of the steps which proceed the first stage in the manufacturing process proper. Strictly, data preparation, indexing, testing (also called simulation), and creating the image are … [Read more...]