[HN Gopher] The Secret History of ATAPI
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The Secret History of ATAPI
Author : finite_jest
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-11-24 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.os2museum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.os2museum.com)
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-...
|
| 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.
| cesarb wrote:
| 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.
| bikson wrote:
| On the early DVD times also. Or you can play cds just from
| drive wihout system. Funny times.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| monocasa wrote:
| An interesting point that isn't made super clear in the article:
| ATAPI basically _is_ SCSI, just encapsulated in ATA commands over
| an ATA bus. This is possible because SCSI is more a network
| protocol with a lot underlying physical encapsulations. The PI in
| ATAPI stands for [SCSI] Packet Interface.
|
| So it's no wonder that ATAPI killed off SCSI CD drives in PCs.
| Since it _was_ SCSI, it really just killed off having to buy an
| extra host bus adapter card to send the same command set.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > it really just killed off having to buy an extra host bus
| adapter card to send the same command set.
|
| Sometimes that stuff could get pretty baroque. Back in the day
| I had a 20 MB HD for my Atari 8 bit computer, which involved an
| adapter from the Atari proprietary bus to SCSI/SASI, then a
| second adapter from SCSI to the MFM HD interface. You needed
| one of the custom DOSes to make use of it, as the standard
| Atari DOS had never envisioned things like hard drives.
| boondaburrah wrote:
| We had a lot of SCSI devices in my house, and I think maybe
| like, 2 devices had the same connector. Even ZIP and JAZ,
| both by iomega, couldn't agree. The Atari ST in my place also
| has an ACSI connector, which is my guess, SCSI but yet more
| different somehow.
|
| At that point I didn't even want plug'n'play or hotplug
| because getting something set up once was enough for you to
| never desire to change it.
| wazoox wrote:
| I still have a huge crate of SCSI cables for my obsolete
| gear. Stuff like 25 pins to 50, 50 to 68, 68 to 80 pins,
| HVD and LVD cables with a bunch of various connectors,
| cables with integrated passive or active terminators,
| terminators that only terminate the high bits, cables with
| 3 connectors (yes, really) for devices with only one SCSI
| port, etc.
|
| Like the old saying goes, "there are valid technical
| reasons that demand that you sacrifice a black goat here
| and there to your SCSI chain".
| samstave wrote:
| it woulg be wonders if you could give a history of the JAZZ
| drive and the other iomega things
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaz_drive
| kstrauser wrote:
| Ah, Jaz. My college buddy had one and we christened it the
| WORN Drive: Write Once, Read Never.
| userbinator wrote:
| USB Mass Storage (bulk only, at least) is also SCSI-based.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The old USB mass storage class was custom, but USB 3.0 and up
| enclosures should do UASP (USB Ander SCSI Protocol).
| mmastrac wrote:
| I assume you mean "USB Attached SCSI Protocol" :)
| [deleted]
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