What happened to TrueX CD-ROMs?

[jrichrds]

I thought TrueX technology would get popular after it got cheaper and speed barriers for standard CD-ROM technology were reached. Guess not?

 

[tweakmm]

do you really need 5 seconds shaved off of your install times?
although i know that it may take off more, you only need to install something once

 

[jrichrds]

I always thought the main benefit of TrueX was the much quieter read speeds. Since with it's multiple optical readers, the disc doesn't have to spin at such a high speed to attain the same high transfer rates as the fastest standard cd-roms.

Then again, I've never owned one so I can't attest to what I read about its quietness.

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: jrichrds
I always thought the main benefit of TrueX was the much quieter read speeds. Since with it's multiple optical readers, the disc doesn't have to spin at such a high speed to attain the same high transfer rates as the fastest standard cd-roms.

Then again, I've never owned one so I can't attest to what I read about its quietness.

I thought the benefit was higher speeds...

I.E. TrueX 72x models...

 

[jrichrds]

Oh yah, higher speeds is the main benefit. To me personally, the main benefit would have been the same high speeds as conventional 52x readers, but much quieter.

I just thought that as long as there's a way to speed up CD-ROMs, it'll be implemented for marketing purposes. After all, that's why 52x CD-ROMs were introduced after 48x CD-ROMs.

Maybe the technology never got cheap enough, soon enough...

 

[Delbert]

I had (have) an old Kenwood trueX (forgot which one now) drive in the closet somewhere. It had a hard time reading CDR's. They recalled the earlier version for a similar problem.

 

[jeffrey]

I'll never give up my 72x TrueX CD-ROM drive!!
TrueX drives truely do give true speed. Mine starts reading at 70X and finishes at the outer edge with 74X!!

The drive is whisper quiet and stable.

Unless you have installed software with ones of these, you might not understand how fast they truely are. Some people say that the drives have trouble reading some brands of cdr's, but I haven't encountered this problem (use the latest firmware).

When I'm playing a game that requires the cdrom, or installing software I always use this drive.

 

[jrichrds]

I also heard earlier TrueX drives had issues. It sounds like they've been worked out though, as is evident from the post above mine.

So it just makes me wonder...whatever happened to TrueX. You'd think manufacturers would be spitting out TrueX drives at speeds greater than the top conventional CD-ROM speed (52x?) to one-up each other.
Maybe ZenResearch (makers of TrueX technology) want too much in royalty payments.

 

[Haunter9X]

All I have to say on this topic is that they were a real pain to find at first and when the computer store I worked at finally started carrying them, the damn things would die about 50-60% of the time (Out of forty we sold, over twenty of them came back because they died, as in they wouldn't read anything for some and they wouldn't spin up for others).
-Haunter9x

 

[spanky]

i had a 52x and 72x. i didn't like either of them really. often they didn't like certain cdr's and would hang my system.

 

[champy]

i have my kenwood true 72x in my closet and miss it dearly, it doesnt support windows 2k or XP so im stuck with it in the closet .

 

[zephyrprime]

Just give it some time. I think that it will catch on. I think what will push multi beam into the marketplace is the ceiling that the cd burners have hit. There isn't enough demand to get faster speeds out of regular cd-roms but I think there will be more demand for faster cd burners.

Concerning install speeds, I recently installed visual studio .net and it was the most god awful slow install I've ever had the misfortune to run. The data on the cd's aren't compressed at all and there are thousands and thousands of files. The slow access time of cd-roms meant that I spent hours installing that damn program.

 

[Dug]

have my kenwood true 72x in my closet and miss it dearly, it doesnt support windows 2k or XP so im stuck with it in the closet .

You must have a problem then. Because 2k and XP should work fine with it. All cdrom's work of generic drivers that have been supplied from the beginning. Even a boot disk has support for it.

I do miss mine. I too had problems reading cdr's so I got rid of it. But on pressed cd's it was amazing how quiet and fast it was. I remember swapping back and forth between my cdrw and the 72x for installs. The 72x would install anywhere from 45seconds to 4minutes faster than a regular 48x drive.

 

[Vinny N]

Originally posted by: Dug

have my kenwood true 72x in my closet and miss it dearly, it doesnt support windows 2k or XP so im stuck with it in the closet .

You must have a problem then. Because 2k and XP should work fine with it. All cdrom's work of generic drivers that have been supplied from the beginning. Even a boot disk has support for it.

Nope, it's not a driver issue, or the drive being detected, appearing in 2k/XP.

I don't think you've read up on the problem at all.

It might seem to work just "fine". But it's not at TrueX speeds. It reads very slowly, at 20X or less. There's no explanation for it. The same drive will work just fine in Win98 at TrueX speeds.

Kenwood has clearly stated the incompatibility here.

 

[Macaw]

Answer: Dead.

Company is bankrupt (http://www.zenresearch.com/), drives are discontinued, and there is no driver support.

I don't see a comeback either. I mean how much innovation have you seen in floppy disk drives over the past 15 years? None. What if someone came out with a multihead triplespeed floppy disk drive. LOL!

 

[jeffrey]

Kenwood 72XTrueX drives work at their rated speed in Win 2k just fine.
I'm running Windows 2K with a 72X.
My old roomate bought one and ran it under Win 2k also.

My roomate's drive had the same initial slow speed that you mentioned, but after changing the dma mode it was verified to run at the rated speed. This was a while ago, but I think if you play with the options their is no problem getting them up to rated speed in Win 2k. I'm not sure about XP.

 

[jrichrds]

Doh! Should have checked the Zen Research web site before even posting this.

As far as floppy drive innovation goes, 3M did come out with the 120MB floppy disk drive that was backwards compatible with standard 1.44MB floppies. I think that died out even faster than the TrueX drives.

 

[MSantiago]

LS-120 drives were a joke. So was the 2.88MB floppy. With 160GB+ hard drives and 5 cent CD-Rs, 1.44MB floppies seem kinda... sad. I'm sure there's a better alternative somewhere out there, but no one can decide on a standard. Zip drives seemed like the next good thing(tm) for a while, but the media was just too expensive.

 

[jrichrds]

Iomega introduced the Zip 750MB last week, with 7.5MB/s read/write speed. Don't think Zip will be replacing the floppy drive as Iomega had hoped, but it's still a nice product (price not considered).

 

[newbiepcuser]

When i work for computer retail store, we got so many returns on the True X Cd-roms. Complaints of reading etc...

 

[jrichrds]

Hope someone buys their technology and makes it more reliable!

 

[Vinny N]

Originally posted by: jeffrey

My roomate's drive had the same initial slow speed that you mentioned, but after changing the dma mode it was verified to run at the rated speed. This was a while ago, but I think if you play with the options their is no problem getting them up to rated speed in Win 2k. I'm not sure about XP.

Nope, plenty of people have tried the drives on different IDE controller chipsets, toggling DMA modes in BIOS and in device manager properties, etc without it ever working like it was suppose to.

Not saying you or your friend or lying, I'll take your word for it that somehow out of the many many reports of problems, someone got it working at full TrueX speed in 2K.

However, if it wasn't a real problem, then Kenwood wouldn't bother with a page officially stating incompatibility would they?

 

[Mamoose]

Originally posted by: champy
i have my kenwood true 72x in my closet and miss it dearly, it doesnt support windows 2k or XP so im stuck with it in the closet .

That's strange as my old 72X is chugging right along with XP Pro!

 

[FatAlbo]

Great when the drive works correctly, but it's a b!tch otherwise. I've got a 42x and it'd crap out even on pressed CDs at times. I've also noticed that the drive can get really noisy if the CD has a lot of stuff silk-screened onto it. Still using the drive that I bought four or five years ago, but it's definitely time to upgrade to DVD.

 

[aka1nas]

I don't think the technology will ever show itself again in CD-ROM or CDRW drives. Neither really require the speed(esp CDRW drives, no one really seems to care about whether they have a 16x or a 48x drive, except for us techies). It is a good idea and I hope future optical systems employ it(maybe Blue laser DVD? we can alwyas hope )