Optical drive

This is a rough timeline of Optical Drive Technologies

1989 - 1990: Optical drives first reach the consumer market [*] High End System: 33MHz 386 or any 486 computer / 4MB RAM [*] 1x cd rom drive with a proprietary controller, drivers [*] Mitsubishi / Mitsumi / Sony / Panasonic [*] ISO 9660 standard for Optical File Systems

1991 - 1992: Microsoft sets MPC1 standards [*] High End System: 50Mhz 486DX2 CPUs are popular / 8MB RAM [*] IDE & SCSI CDROM drives attached via your sound card [*] 2x CD Rom Drives (Twice as Fast!!)

1993 - 1994: MPC Level 2 Standard [*] High End System: Socket 4&5 Pentium / Mature 486 / 16MB RAM [*] 3x & 4x IDE & SCSI CDROM drives (Twice as Fast Again!!, still used your sound card) [*] CD-Rom drives that had those clumsy ejectible cartridges were still common [*] Expensive CD-R drives that often burned coasters

1995 - 1996: PC Level 3 Standard High End System: Socket 7 / Socket 8 / 32MB RAM 4x to 12 x CLV IDE CD ROM appear (Constant Linear Velocity) Tray loading drives displace the cartridge drives "El Torito" extension to ISO 9660 provides for bootable CD-Roms "Joliet" extension to ISO 9660 allows for Unicode and long filenames on CD-Roms CD-R drives become affordable, but buffer underruns are common if you multitask when burning CD-RW drive appear CR-ROM drives are expected to be part of a consumer PC Slot Loading CR-Roms appear

1997 - 1999: CAV Drives and DVD-ROMs High End System: Slot 1 / Super Socket 7 / 64MB RAM CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) CDROM drives appear with speeds > 12x that quickly ramped up from 24x to 52x in about 6 months CDROM drives > 24x were often very loud ATA Packet Interface (ATAPI) becomes official for putting 1x & 2x DVD-ROM Affordable CD-R drives that work reliably are available DVD-ROM (Up to 10x ) appear DVD-RW (Versions < 1.2) appear near the end of this period

2000 - 2004: Writeable DVDs mature Computers: Socket 370 / Slot A / Socket A / Socket 423 / Socket 754 / Socket 939 10x DVD-ROM drives are common DVD-RW (Version 1.2) appear as the standard matures DVD+R / DVD+RW appear Early Sata optical drives appear that are Pata drives with a Sata bridge on the controller

2005 - 2015: Market Stability Computers: Socket >= 775 / Socket >= AM2 True Sata Super Multi 20x DVD drives replace PATA drives and bridged drives pretty quickly for new builds Most DVD drives support all common +/- formats BD-ROM drives exist but never become common M-Disc arrives in 2009 for people that want archives that last for more than a few years

2016: "Internet killed the optical star"

Large capacity Bootable USB drives make

This is a list of all CD/DVD drives in the wiki

Device	Bus type	Bus version	Bus speed	CD read	CD read	CD-R	CD-R	CD-RW	DVD	Transport	Discs	Line out	SPDIF
Matsushita CW-7503	SCSI	SCSI-2	10 MHz	20 x	3 MB/s 20 x	8 x	1.2 MB/s 8 x	0 x	0 x	Tray	1		None