LGR - True-X: The World's Fastest CD-ROM

There are a number of 52x True-X drives for $9 on eBay right now, not quite as insanely fast as the 72x but still faster than other drives. I even found a 'vintage' Ars Technica review - <a href="http://archive.arstechnica.com/reviews/1q99/truex52-1.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://archive.arstechnica.com/reviews/1q99/truex52-1.html</a> which is a fun read. <a href="https://www.ebay.com/itm/121832267080" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.ebay.com/itm/121832267080</a> - I picked one up, will drop it into one of my systems that still has IDE and report back.

I always wondered if anyone ever made anything faster than the ubiquitous 52x CD ROM! Now I know!

Ezydenias

Also I love the sound, back in the day I was really scared when my CD Drive spin up to max speed and it was loud as hell. At those points I was like "give me a slow button, I don't care if it reads slower as long as it doesn't rips the CD to shreds and my eardrums as well"

Ezydenias

wait weren't all drives that fast in the end? I remember reading like 72x on my CD Tray back in the day.

Peter Bridger

Great to see this drive picked apart. I remember the complaints against this drive from back in the day and dismissed it. Great to find that with the latest firmware it does indeed live up to the hype. Is this technique used by any DVD or Blu-ray systems?

WHAT 9000? There no way that can be right!

LGR

Indeed, I tend to stick with slower CD drives to this day because of the noise and vibration. Wish these True-X drives were easier to find!

It's over 9000!!!!

The 8-Bit Guy

That's cool how it achieves the extra speed. I used to facepalm quite often back in the late 90s when people were going on about how they were going to upgrade their CD-ROM drive from a 32X to a 52X or whatever so it would be SO MUCH FASTER. And in reality the speed difference was so little that I couldn't understand why they bothered. Not to mention the extra noise. I actually preferred even slower drives like 8X or 16X was fine with me. They were quieter and tended to be more reliable. Since i rarely used the drives for much beyond installing operating systems and stuff, I just had no need for the extra speed.

Man, the BenQ drive in my PC sound even worse than that 56x drive in the Lazy Green Giant. It's sooo loud IT sounds like a mini bandsaw. Really cool video!

Watching in 4K is cool. You can see all the fine detail on the volume wheel for instance. Never knew there was a 72x optical drive either. I always wondered why we never saw higher speed BD-ROM drives or burners. I myself have a had a quad layer (100-125 GB) BR burner for years though I've never actually burned a BR disc. The cost of the 100-125 GB discs was outrageous last time I looked. Obviously flash media is the more practical approach, but the former question still intrigued me.

This is awesome, I love finding really cool classic hot-rod hardware, beyond just Moore's law and the constant incremental improvements.

I still have mine! It's not installed in anything. Was there an earlier, slower model, before? I think I have one of those, but I'd have to dig through my stuff to verify.

Bill Huizinga

Totally anecdotal, but I had two of those (in two different computers) and they both died after 3 or 4 years.

ColdRFusion

Whoa Clint, next thing you know you’ll be taking your birthday off! ;-) I know from experience a wobbly table &amp; a 52X don’t mix, the disc exploded &amp; had to replace the drive.

pcwzrd13

If only there were an 88x drive! At max speed you would see some serious s***! :-P

Uncleawesome

I have been thinking about what was the fastest drive. Now I know :) I'm impressed! To bad it looks just very normal.

Devon the Rogue Supreme

Now if only they made them for SATA connections XP multi beam sounds like it would have better luck with error correction than my current drive

I had the 62x back in the day. It was nothing but problems, but I never firmware updated it. Wish I still had it though.

Tom Schaack

we need a DVD roundup :) i personally prefer the pioneer slotin drives, 106

Daniel Harder

Yeah, I want to buy one, too!

Kris Asick

The instant I read "72x" I immediately knew, "It's either reading multiple points at once or it's essentially a TIME BOMB." Also, the 56x drive may actually have been intentionally slowed down through firmware updates, as 48x is about the safe limit and is what virtually all modern DVD and Blu-Ray drives limit maximum CD read speed to.

Hey Clint, whence can I obtain a nifty LGR mug? 😀

Chad Keck

Oh I remember these bad boys ... I had one that worked flawlessly, but I do recall many complaints as well. I distinctly remember their ads as well with the split-lasers. Darn impressive.

Chris Munch

I remember getting a 2x burner from Comp-USA for $350 and then going home and burning all the stuff I had on zip disks to CD and thinking, I'm never going to run out of space now! Which was useful because I had a very early cable modem and had just found out about newsgroups. Anywho I have a huge binder of CDs and some of those are from that first batch of CDs. BTW, the failure rate on burning CDs in the '96 era was about 50%, and if I remember right CDs cost around $2 each at the time, so it was incredibly annoying to buy a pack of 50 CDs for $100 and have half of them fail. One good thing about Comp-USA was that you could go to the store with a stack of CDs that failed to burn and they'd refund your money. Then again the ones that always failed were their crappy house brand - which I forget the name of, but they were garbage. I switch to Memorex and saw the failure rate go down to like 5%.

Bryndal Dwyre

It'd be interesting to see how it matches up with a dvd drive and a bluray just to see the differences in speed.

Pablo Rodriguez

I'm actually impressed. I wonder why I never heard of these things. Maybe the popular opinion didn't do them any favors and when the latest firmware came out it was too late for them to proliferate. Then again, maybe I DID hear about them and just don't remember. I can't trust my memory of those days much because everything happened so fast.

avfusion

Reminds me of lightscribe drives. Whenever you'd use one, it'd go from a grumble to a rumble and smell lightly of burning plastic. First time I used mine, I honestly thought it was defective and going to catch fire.

Garoninja

You werent kidding you had videos in the works. I am satisfied...FOR NOW :p

LGR

Likewise, this thing genuinely impressed

LGR

Captain, the split-beam collimator lens won't hold the deflector shield much longer, I have to re-route the detector array now or the ASIC is gonna blow!

Evan B

Whoa.. I'm actually shocked that it lived up to the Hype! o_O That's awesome

Thomas Fuchs

When you describe the tech it’s indistinguishable from technobabble on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Hey, that’s probably why I like your show!

LGR

Yeah I'll take short gear farts over lengthy 11k RPM disc noise anytime

LGR

Well that may explain a bit why it's been so hard to find nearly two decades later!

Lindsay Michelle

I liked this nerdy comparison with the 72x drive versus the 56x drive. That spinning noise was horrifying from the 56x drive; I much prefer the 72x's broken gear farts each time the tray moves :P

Great video. These were hard to find new BTW( i couldn't find one at launch!)

LGR

Yeah I definitely plan to do it more often instead of stressing myself out over my schedule :)

Robert Batten

Dont feel bad if you have to take a few days away every now and then to recharge Clint. We all have to do it but am glad you are posting awesomeness once more. 😁

LGR

Same! Or maybe 48x. Super noisy things.

moosemaimer

When I finally got around to buying a CD burner it was, iirc, a 52x read, and that thing sounded like a jet engine when it spun up all the way. Made by Philips.

Travis Howard

And I just saw you referenced that. That's what I get for commenting while still watching the video. 😛

Travis Howard

Vacations do wonders when it comes to sparking motivation and creativity. I'm glad it's refreshed you! Thinking I'll have to do that myself. I have no PTO, but a weekend in the Keweenaw will do in a pinch. 😀 Man, a 72X drive. Makes me think of that early Mythbusters episode where they tried to spin a CD so fast that it fractured into shards. I think they only managed it with an angle grinder motor, though.

LGR

I really thought it must have been a marketing gimmick until I tried it myself. Truly impressed with this!

72x I remember those. That is wicked fast if it reads your media. Really informative though.