The NEC MultiSpin 4Xc Quad-Speed External CD-ROM Changer
Kind: captions
Language: en
Greetings and this is kind of a monstrous LGR thing. This is the NEC MultiSpin 4Xc quad-speed external CD-ROM changer. And this holds seven CDs inside one beefy piece of 90s hardware. This is the model number CDR-C302, and was released at a suggested retail price of $350 US dollars in the summer of 1995.
This is something I have wanted to mess with ever since I was a kid and saw them in various electronics stores. I mean, at the time I didn't even have a CD-ROM, so the fact that there were these gigantic CD-ROM changers talks about forbidden fruit, holy grail kind of material, at least for 10-year-old me.
Now, sure, audio CD changers are nothing special. In fact, every time I go thrifting I'm seeing all sorts of different CD changers, like those that load from cartridges and have gigantic spindles where you can fit hundreds of CDs, like these from Pioneer or even those with spinning trays. But a CD-ROM changer, now that is not as common, at least in my experience.
I don't know. I just didn't see these as much. I've never used one of these external ones, and it's not to say any of these things are rare necessarily, but they're not the most immediate thing that you might go for if you're wanting to install a CD-ROM on your retro computer nowadays.
I mean, seriously, this is just silly. However, silly 90s hardware is kind of my forte, and even though I don't cover them super often, so are CD-ROM games with tons of CDs in the box. Games like Black Dahlia, Ripper, and Phantasmagoria pretty much sold themselves on being multi-disk games.
Phantasmagoria in particular is the one that comes to mind with this, because the game was famous for having seven disks. Let's go ahead and get this brand new one unboxed, because, yeah, it's still sealed. I happily bought this quite a while ago on eBay, and was just like: one of these days I'll get around to it.
And this is that day. (plastic tearing) Oh yeah. (plastic tearing)
All right, got some more information here. It does store up to seven CD-ROMs. And look at all these other things. This is a quad-speed unit, by the way, and it uses SCSI-2 to connect. They did release NEC that is, released a whole bunch of these different disk changers like this for PCs back in the day.
And this just happens to be the largest one that I'm aware of, so that's why I wanted it. Oh, that's a (laughs) That's a comforting note. Look at this. Caution: use of control or adjustments or performance of procedures other than those specified herein may result in hazardous radiation exposure.
I mean... All right. We got some cables here. There's a SCSI cable, 50-pin. It looks like SCSI-2. We got a power cable, and the drive itself. Look how neatly that is taped up. Man, it's like a gift-wrapped present. Whoa! Look at that. It looks so good. That is a fine-looking piece of hardware, brand new, not yellowed at all, which is great.
I was wondering if it would hold up nicely. This part is, feels like painted metal. The plastic on front could very well yellowed. I've seen some yellowed units online. This one didn't. Oh yeah (laughs). This just screams greatness. I don't know.
Something about these industrially designed kind of CD-ROM units, it reminds me of much older CD-ROMs. This was manufactured in June 1995. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That's awesome.
Little rubbery buttons, they feel okay. Volume wheel there, 3 1/2-millimeter audio jack for headphones. I cannot wait to use this.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings and this is kind of a monstrous LGR thing.This is the NEC MultiSpin 4Xc quad-speedexternal CD-ROM changer.And this holds seven CDs insideof one beefy piece of 90s hardware.This is the model number CDR-C302,and was released at asuggested retail priceof 350 US dollars in the summer of 1995.This is something Ihave wanted to mess withever since I was a kid and saw themin various electronics stores.I mean, at the time Ididn't even have a CD-ROM,so the fact that there were thesegigantic CD-ROM changers(laughs)talk about forbidden fruit,holy grail kind of materialat least for 10-year-old me.Now, sure, audio CD changersare nothing special.In fact, every time I go thriftingI'm seeing all sorts ofdifferent CD changers,like those that load from cartridgesand have giganticspindles where you can fithundreds of CDs like these from Pioneeror even those with spinning trays.But a CD-ROM changer, now that isnot as common, at least in my experience.I don't know. I justdidn't see these as much.I've never used one ofthese external ones,and it's not to say any of these thingsare rare necessarily, but they're notthe most immediate thingthat you might go forif you're wanting to install a CD-ROMon your retro computer nowadays.I mean, seriously, this is just silly.However, silly 90s hardwareis kind of my forte,and even though I don't cover them super often,so are CD-ROM games with tons of CDs in the box.Games like Black Dahlia,Ripper, and Phantasmagoriapretty much sold themselveson being multi-disk games.Phantasmagoria in particular is the onethat comes to mind with this,because the game was famousfor having seven disks.Let's go ahead and getthis brand new one unboxed,because, yeah, it's still sealed.I happily bought thisquite a while ago on eBay,and was just like: one of thesedays I'll get around to it.And this is that day.(plastic tearing)Oh yeah.(plastic tearing)All right, got some more information here.It does store up to seven CD-ROMs.And look at all these other things.This is a quad-speed unit, by the way,and it uses SCSI-2 to connect.They did release...NEC that is, released a whole bunchof these different disk changers like thisfor PCs back in the day.And this just happensto be the largest onethat I'm aware of, sothat's why I wanted it.Oh, that's a...(laughs)That's a comforting note.Look at this.Caution: use of control of adjustmentsor performance ofprocedures other than thosespecified herein may result inhazardous radiation exposure.I mean...All right.We got some cables here.There's a SCSI cable, 50-pin.It looks like SCSI-2.We got a power cable,and the drive itself.Look how neatly that is taped up.Man, it's like a gift-wrapped present.Whoa! Look at that.It looks so good.That is a fine-looking piece of hardware,brand new, not yellowedat all, which is great.I was wondering if itwould hold up nicely.This part is, feels like painted metal.This plastic on frontcould very well yellowed.I've seen some yellowed units online.This one didn't.Oh yeah.(laughs)This just screams greatness.I don't know.Something about theseindustrially designedkind of CD-ROM units, it remindsme of much older CD-ROMs.This was manufactured in June 1995.One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.That's awesome.Little rubbery buttons, they feel okay.Volume wheel there,3 1/2-millimeter audiojack for headphones.I cannot wait to use this.We've got a note hereon some very neon paper.\"Attention. Read me first!\"Let's see. What do we got?Some notes here forMacintosh Quadra users,other Macintosh users, andCorel's SCSI-2 diskettedoes some things that don'treally seem to pertain to me.All right, I'm not gonna beinstalling this on a Macintosh.We're gonna be going withWindows 98, because I want to.Actually, maybe Windows95, I don't know yet.This is cool.What is all this?Oh, that has pretty much lost every...(rubber band snaps)Ooh, yep, that's just avery gummy rubber band.Even after 23 years those can perish.Apparently their own interface didn't havethe 50-pin high-density connector,which my Adaptec card does have that.So let's see here.A Macintosh driver on a disk.Got a warranty card here, orreally a registration cardfor warranty and other such things.This is an interesting formfactor for instructions.It's more like a calendar.Okay, so Windows drivers are installedthrough the Corel driver kit.Okay, well...Aha, I feel a disk in here.Corel SCSI Version 2.(disk thumps)There we go, (laughs) a very nondescript3-1/2-inch high-densityfloppy diskette right here.Welcome to Corel's SCSI.You can use virtually any SCSI device andASPI-compatible hostadaptor with Corel SCSI.What is this?We've got a mounting plate or something.No, no, no. This is an adaptor.Aha.Inside the bag we get a smaller bag,and inside the smaller bag,a three-inch CD-ROM adaptor.How handy.It did say we would need one of thosein order to use them in hereso I'm glad it came with that.I gotta see what's inside this though.It's just so large.Let's see what we got here.Well, it's so colorful.Wow.It's a very prettyinternal set of goods hereeven though we're notreally seeing a whole lot.How appealing. (laughs)Well, all right. Well that's that.Let's go ahead and getthis installed into the...or connected to the Lazy Green GiantWindows 98 PC and see what happens.So as far as getting thisconnected, really it's justa matter of plugging inSCSI cable to both sides.And I'm needing to useone of my other cablesbecause the one it came with does not havethe proper 50-pinconnector on the other sideto plug into the PC, but that's okay.All the feature-selection switchesshould be in the correct spotsfor what we're gonna be doing.So the termination is on.Parity check is on.SCSI ID number is default.Power goes right here.Got the correct voltage, of course.And I decided to go with Windows 95.So I've got that...(card thumps)Got that on an SD card right there.So that's gonna go right there.(thunky-thunk)Just curious if I can power onthe drive before powering the PC.Let's see here.(drive clicking, clunking, whirring)(yep, it just keeps going!)Well that was quite anassortment of sounds.(laughs)So yeah, you just press the button.It will eject the inner tray outinto the actual ejection tray thing.And then you can press another oneand it'll swap the innertray part and there we go.Yeah, nice little labeling right there.I was wondering how that handled things.All right, well let's try some games out.Yeah.This is gonna be awesome.All right, let's power it all on.(whirring)(rattling)That's a good sign, I guess.And it is detected.(beep)And Windows 95.So first order of business is get thisCorel software installed, I suppose,although it might have detectedsomething already hopefully.Yeah.(laughs)It has seven individual CD drives.Okay. Let's get this diskgoing, see what we get.This looks ridiculous.Come on now.This appears to be largely forgetting this to work under DOS mode.I don't know.Let's just try it withoutdoing anything else.So I'm just going to try asingle CD-ROM game at the moment.I'm gonna go with StarCraft.Okay.Now I'll know how to runso just to try to refresh,see what happens.Absolutely nothing.So chances are we do need that software.Load it in high memory.Why not?Okay, I just restartedand the drive starteddoing crazy things so...(error sound)Still got nothing.I don't know.Reinstalled it followingall the instructionsin the manual, nothing.So I'm gonna try Windows 98.Rather annoyingly, a lot ofthe stuff it's referring toin here does not come on the disk at all.All right, once again we havethese seven drives detected.(chime)Not accessible.All right. So I've got the LGRWoodgrain 486 going over heresince Windows was nothaving fun with this drive.And I don't know if you saw thatbut the SCSI adaptorinstalled will actuallyautomatically see this asthe other one did, but...And this is what I'm going to be usingto get the drive working,this EZ-SCSI Standard Edition.Thank goodness for things like this.Honestly, this is gonna be way easier,at least if it works with this drive.It should. It has, in my experiencewith other external CD drives.Yeah. There is the host adaptor.It found that on port 340-H.And now it's gonna be scanningfor anything plugged into it,which it has seen this, which is good.That's a good sign.Here we go.What is the first drive letteryou would like EZ-SCSI toreserve for your CD-ROM drive?So I'm gonna start with...Actually, I'm gonna go with E becauseI have an internal drive as wellso we're gonna start there,make all the mods for me.(beep)And we're gonna do thesame thing over here.(beep)Okay.And we'll go ahead and restart.(laughs)Yup.So we've got seven targets.And yes, awesome, awesome, awesome.So it has assigned drive lettersto each of the sevenindividual drives here.And I've still gotGravis UltraSounds stuff.I'm gonna go ahead and...(typing)change that really quick (laughs)cause we don't have aGravis UltraSound installed.At this point we should just be able tostick all of these CDs in here.There's disk one.And there's disk two.And here's disk three.Number four.Yeah. That's looking better.I've got the Sound Blaster Pro going now.So we will have sound.Disk five.(laughs)It's a ridiculous process.Disk six.Oh my goodness, finallydisk frigging seven.There we go.We got all seven disks ofPhantasmagoria installedso we should just be able to go overto each individual driveby letter, starting with E.And this will be disk one.So it'll switch over tothat and read slowly.(laughs)And there we go.It's actually not terribly slow.I mean it is a quad-speeddrive running over SCSI-2so it should be relatively quick.But yeah, switching is a bit of an ordealbecause of course it has to physicallytake something from that internal caddyand move it out into thisloading tray up to the laser.And then there we go.So that's disk two.And then G, of course, wouldbe disk three and so on,all the way through thealphabet up to disk seven.This does lead to a bit of a limitationin the sense that we're not gonna be ableto physically move onedisk internally from...Say if we wanted to move disk fourover to drive one or theE drive, we can't do that.Disk one is always gonna be E.So it depends on the software really.Let's just ahead and load upPhantasmagoria here and see.(typing loudly)Straightforward installation for this,it's only needing diskone in order to do thatso we're gonna actuallyhave to run the game and...(laughs)What is that?SIERRA/SCARYDOS?(laughs)Oh, I've never actually seen theDOS version of Phantasmagoriainstaller folder.That's...(laughs)That's wonderful.(scary music)(roar)(laughs)What a game.(dramatic music)Such dramatics.I'm gonna go ahead andstart a new game hereand get to the chapter selection screen.So if we just started withone it'll continue on.Each chapter is on each diskso let's just skip to chapter twoand see if it'll figure out that...(laughs)No it doesn't.I kind of suspected thatjust due to what I knewabout the way that this works internally.In fact I think it was on the box.All right, so you can kind of see herethere are these trays in the backthat each one of the CDs is inserted towhenever you insert it into the drive.But then this actual loading traywill go and retrieve one of the disksand bring it up to the laser.The thing is, it only does thatwhenever you're doing theeject and insertion process.So in order for me to get CD twoto this game to be able to read it,I'd have to physically swap it over,which completely defeats the purposeof having all these multi-disk gameson a multi-CD-ROM changer like this.If it had some sort of other mechanismwhich would actually take the CDand then move it overto the laser assemblyso it would read it fromthe same drive letter,then that would be ideal for F&V games,multi-disk games likethis that just swap outand don't actually askfor another drive letter.Since this is lookingfor the same drive letterevery single time a disk swap occurs,then we're stuck with this limitation.All right, let's get to some acting.- In here, in the bedroom.- What are you doing?- Role-playing, gosh.- I'm starting my new book.- So what?Did you go buy the drain cleaner?- The drain cleaner.Oh, this is a great scene.- What? Drain cleaner?- And by great I mean terrible.- Don't be coy with me.I asked you several timesto go buy me drain cleaner.Now did you do it?(LGR laughs loudly)- Well, I know you said thesink was clogging your darkroom,but you never asked me to goget you any drain cleaner.I would have remembered...- Oh, it's just the mostendearing kind of terrible.Put your laptop away.You can check your AOLemail address later.You don't have mail.Most unfortunate thatI'm not gonna be ableto actually play through this.I mean I could.I would have to physically swapthe disk out like a caveman.What's the point of that?Honestly, I didn't even think about thatwhen I picked this one out online.I just remember seeing it back in the day,saw it show up on eBay (laughs)and didn't think about it.I'm like: \"holy crap, it's great.\"\"I want this thing.\"And plus it looks neat.Doesn't it?It just looks great.But for multi-disk gamesit's kinda pointless,at least if it's a gamelike this that is gonna lookin the same exact drive designationevery single time it's swapping a disk.So if anybody has any recommendationsof a retro drive thatwould accomplish this...I mean I know of a few myself,but if you used one backin the day, do let me know.I would appreciate anykind of recommendationscause honestly, I would love to geta six or seven-disk changerthat actually lets meswap between those and keep the diskin the same drive letter everysingle time it swaps disks.Kind of a shame we couldn'tget it working in Windowsbut we'd be in the same boat anyway.It works the same,either operating system.But hopefully you stillhad fun with the unboxingand set up and everythingelse that we were doing.I enjoyed it anyway.And if you did, perhapsyou'd like to stick around.There are new videosevery week here on LGR.And as always, thank youvery much for watching!\n"
