does anyone remember when cd burners first came out?

[Zaitsevs]

if so, how much did they cost? did you get one? how fast was it and how many coasters did it produce?

just would like to talk about old stuff like that


I was looking on newegg.com and saw blue ray drives for 600$ usd. One of the buyers had said " I was an early adopter of cd burners and dvd burners and I paid much more for that than I did this drive"

do you guys remember how much they were?

I remember when my aunt had one and I would get a list of songs and then make a cd. I used to be real excited -

 

[vshah]

1x drives were 800 at one point, iirc

 

[HendrixFan]

I remember when CD burners were $1000 or so. I bought a 2X burner when the prices dropped to around $200, which was also the same price I broke down and bought my DVD burner.

I bought Maxell CDrs with that first burner. They were in jewel cases and were $4 each. I seem to remember freaking out about each coaster, because they were quite pricey. I would CTRL ALT DEL and kill nearly every process I could before burning a CD, just to try and avoid something that would clog my system and make the disc write fail. I even had to shut down ICQ because that would sometimes ruin a burn.

If I remember correctly, the software that came with the burner was NTI CD maker.

 

[ed21x]

4x2x8 for $400. My Plextor 12x10x32A is still going strong

 

[Zaitsevs]

I remember that ^^, having to shut down everything. I also remember leaving the computer alone while it burned too. but now you can burn and do whtever you want.

 

[FoBoT]

i remember when cd players first came out
i paid $375 ,i think, for a 3X cd reader and sound blaster 16 controller card. that was under a trade up program where i had to send in my "old" 8 bit sound blaster card to upgrade

that was about 1994 or 1995, i think it was just before windows 95 came out

 

[Zaitsevs]

this thread is now about any type of old hardware

I remember building my first computer -

I mailed a check to newegg.com, I already had an athlon 2200+ from a friend who upgraded and gave me his old one. I mailed a check for 210.30$ that was for a 512 stick of ram and an MSI motherboard that is still going strong.

man was I antsy.

 

[RichieZ]

i had a 2X HP-> 4X Masushita -> 6X Yamaha -> 8X Plextor -> 32X Lite-ON

i think the first 2X cost about $400 but I returned it becuase IDE was garbage back then, I got the 4X external SCSI drive for not too much more (OEM)

 

[mobobuff]

And now they're ~$30 and can read and burn many times faster and support multiple media.

And now computers don't require 90% of its resources to burn something.

Ahhh, technology makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

 

[TheNinja]

My first burner was an HP and I paid around $400 for it. I thought I was so cool that I could rip songs off all my CDs and make one "super CD". I think I paid around $4-$5 for a blank disc. I would then charge people $10 to make a mix CD for them. I didn't make too many coasters once I realized that I had to kill every other process that was running. It used to take like 1 hour to burn a CD so when I had a long list of requests from people, I would set my alarm and get up every 2 hours during the night to start a new CD. Quite the little enterprise I had going. Although after all the coasters I made and the time it took to rip or download a song I was probably making 2 bucks an hour.

 

[NaOH]

first burner..sony 2x max for close to $3xx. It had a CD caddey that you would place CDs or CDRs into to read or burn. That thing burnt plenty of coasters back in the day.

 

[handoverfist]

Yes, and they helped me make $

 

[atomicacid55]

I had a 2x burner for $300 or something. And then I got a 4x burner for around that much too. I was the sh!t in school. People were like "WHOAZ you got a burner, burn this game... burn this album.. burn this burn that." This was also back when we were stuck in 56k land. Yea. Download MP3s at like 20 minutes/song and then burn a full CD which would take another 20 minutes.. and voila you could play it on your damn car now.

Originally posted by: TheNinja
My first burner was an HP and I paid around $400 for it. I thought I was so cool that I could rip songs off all my CDs and make one "super CD". I think I paid around $4-$5 for a blank disc. I would then charge people $10 to make a mix CD for them. I didn't make too many coasters once I realized that I had to kill every other process that was running. It used to take like 1 hour to burn a CD so when I had a long list of requests from people, I would set my alarm and get up every 2 hours during the night to start a new CD. Quite the little enterprise I had going. Although after all the coasters I made and the time it took to rip or download a song I was probably making 2 bucks an hour.

Oh yea... I had an HP burner too. I charged people a fortune for burning CDs. I remember buying blank CDs for like $20 for 10.... LOL. That was hilarious.

Gosh.. I loved my HP 2x2x6 on Parallel port.. LOL EXTERNAL DRIVE FTW! And then I got a 4x4x6 external USB drive.... Upgraded to my parents' 4x4x24 which used the same drive as my external, except I was limited in reads by USB.

4x4x24 lasted me FOREVER until one day I bought a $49 TDK 52x burner after my knee ripped shattered the whole tray of my 12x DVD drive.

Now I use both my 52x TDK VeloCD which is the equivalent of a 52x LiteOn along with my NEC 3540. My TDK drive burns hella errors (I don't know why), and I primarly rely on my NEC drive anyways.

 

[wetcat007]

Those were the days! Pentium 2 with MMX!!!!

 

[SearchMaster]

My first was a Memorex 2x that I paid ~$300 for. I really bought it more for work (I was working from home at the time). It always worked fairly well for me, but a few years ago they had a class action lawsuit regarding that burner, so I sent in the serial number (still had it though not in service) and they sent me a new 48x. That probably ended up being one of my best hardware purchases ever .

 

[PHiuR]

2x burner...I paid around $100-200. SOOO MANY COASTERS!

Then I got a 8 or 16x, followed by my 32x Liteon that I still use today.

 

[Quasmo]

I got an HP used off eBay for $250. I couldnt even find media for it. I paid $200 for my DVD burner and it only burned +rw discs.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

I think it was a 1 or 2 speed SCSI harddisk/CD burner combo we got at work. Think it was about $600 at that time.

 

[lupi]

Nope, don't remember people complaining about a new format for games and how long they had till they needed to upgrade from just floppies. (Tiefighter on a 4x for me), or spending 340 for an 8 meg ram upgrade (that did hurt as memory prices finally collapsed about 3 months later).

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: lupi
Nope, don't remember people complaining about a new format for games and how long they had till they needed to upgrade from just floppies. (Tiefighter on a 4x for me), or spending 340 for an 8 meg ram upgrade (that did hurt as memory prices finally collapsed about 3 months later).

And all the programs that arrived on CD but were in fact no larger than 1 or 2 floppies

 

[BurnItDwn]

I bought a 2x Mitsumi CD Burner early in 1998 for $300.
It was the first time I had seen them at a computer show for less than $500, the price was right as was the timing. (back then, $300 would barely pay for 8GB of hard drive space)

 

[imported_cheapdude]

I remember I even had a 4 disc changer at one point.
My first CDR was a 2x acer, that thing was worse than a floopy drive.

 

[fustercluck]

One of those "Hey I was just thinking about that" threads that pops up i see.

The reason is I need a cheap, reliable CD burner. Any chance I could score one for 10 bucks or am I looking more around $20? For some reason every CD/DVD burner this fam has bought in the past has never worked very well. Could trade a DVD drive for one

 

[Spineshank]

I paid almost $200 for my first cd burner. It was a Yamaha 8x4x24x

 

[adairusmc]

My first burner was a Ricoh caddy drive, 2x burn speed. I can't remember what it cost now, but it was somewhere around $700.