Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!bdest
From: bdest@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Benoit Desjardins)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Apple's new CD-ROM rumor!!
Message-ID: <55450@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 90 18:24:32 GMT
Reply-To: bdest@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Benoit Desjardins)
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Services
Lines: 54


In tidbits #26 (22-Oct-90), there was an article about a rumor that
Apple was planning to introduce sometime next year a new CD-ROM drive
with access time of 28 ms!!! Does anyone have any additional info on
that? For those who are interested, here is a copy of that article.
 
                                       Benoit Desjardins
                                       benoit@speedy.cs.pitt.edu
 
P.S. Any info from someone at Apple would be appreciated.
 
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Tidbits #26/22-Oct-90
 
CD-ROM Superstar
 
They arenUt fast, they arenUt pretty, and they seldom connect to your stereo
as nicely as you would like, but CD-ROMs are here to stay. They have found a
niche in the market despite their many limitations because they provide an
excellent way to disseminate lots of information cheaply. Someone at
Macworld Expo in Boston was advertising a monthly CD-ROM disk, much like a
monthly magazine (you thought wading through several hundred pages of
Macworld or MacUser was hard, try making it through 650 megs of a CD-ROM).
More reasonable uses of CD-ROMs are massive publishing projects for static
information, such as parts lists and the like.
 
The news is that Apple is going to step up the incentive to buy a CD-ROM
player sometime next year by introducing a new, cheaper model and lowering
the price on the current CD-ROM player. The cheaper model might even be
included internally in future Macintosh models. ThatUs kind of cool, but not
all that impressive, other than that you might have a use for the $500
thatUs burning a small hole in your checking account. No, the real scoopQand
we hope that it is trueQis that Apple will introduce at some point in the
next year (note the ambiguous date) a CD-ROM player (oh boy, another one)
having an access time of 28 milliseconds. RBig deal,S you say, Rmy Quantum
105 is 19 milliseconds.S Yes, but can your Quantum 105 read any CD-ROM disk,
all 650 megabytes of it? DidnUt think so. The fastest of the CD-ROM drives
these days have around a 350 millisecond access time, which is pretty poky.
 
This drive would be impressive if it were to happen, so I asked a
knowledgeable friend if it could be done. HeUs not a CD-ROM expert, but he
thought that the main problem was in the stepper motor and its control
circuitry. Essentially, stepper motors work slowly in audio CD-ROM drives
because there is no reason for them to step quickly. However, if a faster,
more powerful stepper motor was used in conjunction with a well-designed
microcontroller, a 28 millisecond speed would be theoretically possible.
 
Information from:
   Pythaeus
   Adam C. Engst - TidBITS Editor
 
 
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