19 Oct
2005
19 Oct
'05
7:49 p.m.
On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 21:32:27 +0100 (BST)
Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote:
On Oct 18 2005, 8:29, John Foust wrote:
Back when I experienced my first 'high speed' CDROM drive, which was on my
new work computer, I heard the humming as the CD spun up and thought 'hmmm.'
Then I started adding progressively more scotch tape to a spot on a CD to throw it off
balance and investigate the noise level produced.
Then I got brave (and stupid) and scotch taped a little metal washer on the disk.
The CD drive buzzed so loudly that I had to quickly yank the power cord on my computer to
keep people from wondering what the HELL I was doing in my cubicle and investigate. I had
to paperclip open the drive (the paper clip is called the Mac-in-tool in my personal
folklore, because it's a tool no Mac user could live without, even for the floppy
drive) to get out the CD. It wasn't a 52x drive, just the first drive I encountered
greater than 4x.
At 01:39 PM 10/17/2005, Bob Bradlee wrote:
>With the aid of a paperclip and a prybar, I
opened up the drive to
fine a
>shattered CD inside.
But I've seen this happen *twice* to a client
who wasn't
dunking them in LOX. CDs are spinning quite quickly.
I've never actually seen it happen, but a couple of years ago one of
the manufacturers who supplies the University issued a warning about
fast drives, and IIRC some were recalled. The explanation was that the
faster "52x" drives run at a speed which is very close to that at which
centrifugal force can make a polycarbonate disk break up, so a defect
in the disk can have a profound effect.