this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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It was so popular you could walk into a Walmart and buy blank cds and put it into most computers that have a cd drive in the last 15 years and write it from Windows Media Player.
Even today you can still do it for cheap. USB external CD drive with write capabilities: $18.99
https://www.newegg.com/p/105-00B4-00001?item=9SIAKF3DSX2734&cm_sp=SP-_-1860010-_-0-_-2-_-9SIAKF3DSX2734-_-Cd+drive-_-cd%7Cdrive-_-8
50 Blank CDs, $16.60 https://www.newegg.com/verbatim-52x-700mb-cd-r/p/N82E16817507007
If you wanted to write to a CD more than once you could buy CD-RW's which had the ability to be formatted (wiped clean) and used again.
The hardware to write disks was so cheap it became standard. The cheapest of laptops or desktops would have the ability built in. example:
$168.99 - Cheap junk computer from Walmart (I would not recommend that computer, just figured it would show just how cheap a computer gets that has it built in) https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dell-Latitude-E5420-Laptop-Intel-i3-WiFi-DVD-CDRW-250GB-Win-10-Professional-HDMI/376791632?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=100001344&gclsrc=aw.ds&&adid=22222222228376791632_100001344_153828919326_20723081503&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=m&wl3=679332641651&wl4=pla-2235097983966&wl5=9013636&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=129884431&wl11=online&wl12=376791632_100001344&veh=sem&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAy9msBhD0ARIsANbk0A_ZhAcoOfd9b3WACPKd_QXPuq3NIZoFnxorRXOK1Xx-CwQz7SO1jSAaAlfhEALw_wcB
You could also write to a CD-R more than once, but you couldn’t truly delete anything (it’d just write to a separate sector on the disc), which would be really frustrating as soon as you could no longer fit your school project on the disc (though, not that it mattered because compatibility of optical media always seemed atrocious anyway… Probably a mix of different versions of PowerPoint or whatever and actual CD compatibility issues).
I agree, but when you introduce someone to math, you don't start with integrals, haha. Thank you though for following up with good info, I almost added some about it, and thought it may make it over the top for an intro
I figured you knew, I just wanted to complain a little haha.
Yeah there was a point after which it became cheaper for the manufacturers to just make read/write drives than produce both.
Fun fact, for a while they would disable the "write" portion. They would sell the same exact drive one for like 99$ that could only read and one for like 199$ that write. Once the techies found out and it started becoming common knowledge they gave up even selling read only drives.
That's not really a junk computer. That's actually a respectable machine, especially if you use a linux distro.