4 ms·

The weirdest thing was the sound cards were basically "everything you need for multimedia" at the time. eg. Joystick, Midi and CD-ROM connectivity, etc were all

The weirdest thing was the sound cards were basically "everything you need for multimedia" at the time. eg. Joystick, Midi and CD-ROM connectivity, etc were all on the sound card. So before ATAPI we still didn't buy a specific CD-ROM interface card to connect CD-ROM drives. We just bought a sound card that had the CD-ROM interface we needed. You just had to make sure you bought the right CD-ROM connectivity for your sound card.

mikepurvis 5y ago
In the early days there were a lot of bundles you could buy that were a sound card + CD-ROM drive, and sometimes even speakers and software, eg: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/sound-blaster-16-isa-bundle-cd-rom-1892465412 https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/sound-blaster-16-isa-... My first PC was a used 486DX in the mid-90s, and it had a Sound Blaster 16 (ISA) with the IDE connection on it for a CD-ROM drive. However, the motherboard also had its own dedicated primary and secondary IDE channels already, so it seemed simpler to just use those when I bought myself a CD-ROM drive, and avoid whatever hoops would have to be jumped through to make the sound-card-connected one work.
- bikson 5y ago
  On the early DVD times also. Or you can play cds just from drive wihout system. Funny times.
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Back ages ago, I had one of the CD-ROMs with full audio controls and analog out, and used it along with a bare AT PSU and one of those drive-bay equalizers as a desktop CD player, no proper computer involved anywhere.
    - GeorgeDewar 5y ago
      In the same vain, as a child of about 10 I used to use a CD-ROM drive hooked up to a PSU and headphones to listen to music in bed. It was lovely as a portable CD player would have been totally unaffordable to my family at the time.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    There was definitely a period in the early 2000s where having CD-RW plus separate DVD-ROM drive was a somewhat standard "premium" configuration— it obviously was great for duplication, or you could do stuff like load up multiple Encarta discs at once, or have both Diablo II discs in at the same time, whatever.
  - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
    Those DVD sound card+drive bundles weren't for connectivity to the drive in that era however (ATAPI and SCSI were the only standards for DVD-ROM drives). The bundle was to get a card with a hardware MPEG2 decoder since MPEG2 was taxing on the systems of the era. With the exception of the TV out those cards were a terrible investment though. CPUs went from Pentium 120Mhz to Athlon 1000Mhz within 5 years and the playback software got optimized massively as well (CyberLink PowerDVD was a big success since it could enable MPEG2 playback on even a lowly Pentium MMX). In fact i remember being given a couple of those cards in that era since pretty much everyone could play DVDs without the dedicated hardware and no one could be bothered setting up the drivers for it.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      I had a P4 (~1.6GHz) at one point and I remember DVD playback even on that system was a bit flaky. Like it was mostly good but would hitch for a second or two every fifteen minutes. Just often enough to make it pretty annoying for trying to actually watch a full movie.
      - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
        If you were still in that era i'd say make sure the drive is in DMA and not PIO mode! The drives would operate in a fallback mode called PIO unless you installed specific drivers for the DVD drive. The symptoms you describe sound like this. 1.6Ghz was definitely enough for MPEG2 decoding.
    - mrpippy 5y ago
      Apple started using software DVD decoding once the G3 hit 500 MHz (with the dual USB white iBook)
- cesarb 5y ago
  There were plenty of cool oddities back then. I had a CD-ROM drive which had a full set of playback and volume controls, a headphone jack, and an IR receiver for the associated remote control. Since back then most CD-ROM drives also had an analog audio path directly to the sound card (through a separate thin cable), you could play a music CD without involving the operating system other than to adjust the master volume (though the operating system could also control the playback if it desired). Nowadays it's all gotten boring, all we can do is rip the digital audio data through the operating system and write it to the sound card.
exidy 5y ago
It's not weird at all! There was a brief window of time between CD-ROMs and multimedia capability becoming affordable and them becoming ubiquitous in the PC market. During this time the "Multimedia PC" [1] standard / branding was introduced to differentiate PCs that had that capability. If you were an OEM PC builder back in the 90s on margins so thin they could only be detected using an electron microscope, you'd be looking for the cheapest way to qualify for yet another sticker on your beige box. Naturally you'd gravitate towards solutions that minimised your part count. So we got sound cards with CD-ROM interfaces. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC

mikepurvis 5y ago

In the early days there were a lot of bundles you could buy that were a sound card + CD-ROM drive, and sometimes even speakers and software, eg: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/sound-blaster-16-isa-bundle-cd-rom-1892465412 https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/sound-blaster-16-isa-... My first PC was a used 486DX in the mid-90s, and it had a Sound Blaster 16 (ISA) with the IDE connection on it for a CD-ROM drive. However, the motherboard also had its own dedicated primary and secondary IDE channels already, so it seemed simpler to just use those when I bought myself a CD-ROM drive, and avoid whatever hoops would have to be jumped through to make the sound-card-connected one work.

bikson 5y ago
On the early DVD times also. Or you can play cds just from drive wihout system. Funny times.
- throwanem 5y ago
  Back ages ago, I had one of the CD-ROMs with full audio controls and analog out, and used it along with a bare AT PSU and one of those drive-bay equalizers as a desktop CD player, no proper computer involved anywhere.
  - GeorgeDewar 5y ago
    In the same vain, as a child of about 10 I used to use a CD-ROM drive hooked up to a PSU and headphones to listen to music in bed. It was lovely as a portable CD player would have been totally unaffordable to my family at the time.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  There was definitely a period in the early 2000s where having CD-RW plus separate DVD-ROM drive was a somewhat standard "premium" configuration— it obviously was great for duplication, or you could do stuff like load up multiple Encarta discs at once, or have both Diablo II discs in at the same time, whatever.
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  Those DVD sound card+drive bundles weren't for connectivity to the drive in that era however (ATAPI and SCSI were the only standards for DVD-ROM drives). The bundle was to get a card with a hardware MPEG2 decoder since MPEG2 was taxing on the systems of the era. With the exception of the TV out those cards were a terrible investment though. CPUs went from Pentium 120Mhz to Athlon 1000Mhz within 5 years and the playback software got optimized massively as well (CyberLink PowerDVD was a big success since it could enable MPEG2 playback on even a lowly Pentium MMX). In fact i remember being given a couple of those cards in that era since pretty much everyone could play DVDs without the dedicated hardware and no one could be bothered setting up the drivers for it.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    I had a P4 (~1.6GHz) at one point and I remember DVD playback even on that system was a bit flaky. Like it was mostly good but would hitch for a second or two every fifteen minutes. Just often enough to make it pretty annoying for trying to actually watch a full movie.
    - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
      If you were still in that era i'd say make sure the drive is in DMA and not PIO mode! The drives would operate in a fallback mode called PIO unless you installed specific drivers for the DVD drive. The symptoms you describe sound like this. 1.6Ghz was definitely enough for MPEG2 decoding.
  - mrpippy 5y ago
    Apple started using software DVD decoding once the G3 hit 500 MHz (with the dual USB white iBook)
cesarb 5y ago
There were plenty of cool oddities back then. I had a CD-ROM drive which had a full set of playback and volume controls, a headphone jack, and an IR receiver for the associated remote control. Since back then most CD-ROM drives also had an analog audio path directly to the sound card (through a separate thin cable), you could play a music CD without involving the operating system other than to adjust the master volume (though the operating system could also control the playback if it desired). Nowadays it's all gotten boring, all we can do is rip the digital audio data through the operating system and write it to the sound card.

exidy 5y ago

It's not weird at all! There was a brief window of time between CD-ROMs and multimedia capability becoming affordable and them becoming ubiquitous in the PC market. During this time the "Multimedia PC" [1] standard / branding was introduced to differentiate PCs that had that capability. If you were an OEM PC builder back in the 90s on margins so thin they could only be detected using an electron microscope, you'd be looking for the cheapest way to qualify for yet another sticker on your beige box. Naturally you'd gravitate towards solutions that minimised your part count. So we got sound cards with CD-ROM interfaces. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC