September 1994 / BYTE Lab Product Report

24 CD-ROM Drives: Double-Speed Rules	Today's mainstream CD-ROM drives offer faster performance at the most economical prices ever. We'll tell you which one is right for you. - by Chandrika Mysore
The Best Double-Speed CD-ROM Drives Rankings for Best and Lost Cost Considered Rankings for Text Considered For the best in price and performance... Need low cost and fast speed? Need to find data quickly?	Today's double-speed drives demonstrate sameness rather than distinction.
Do You Need Quad Speed?	NEC's MultiSpin 4X Pro performed without flaws. This high-performance drive achieved 590.3-KBps throughput, or two times the rate of double-speed products.
Multisession Questions	All the CD-ROM drive vendors that participated in this report say that their drives can read multisession CDs; however, when we tried to read a multisession CD, none of the drives succeeded.
How We Tested	We rated the drives for speed, features, and ease of use.
Fast Access to Multiple CDs	For fast access to data stored on numerous CDs, consider one of the changers now available that can hold up to 18 CD-ROMs.
CD-ROM For The Road CD-ROM For The Road	We tested three double-speed and one triple-speed drive for portable applications.
For SCSI infor mation numbers at a glance	For SCSI information numbers at a glance, CMS Enhancements' Platinum II CD-ROM drive offers a unique front panel that displays the termination status and ID number (along with the power and ``drive busy'' indicators).
Kudos to the few CD-ROM drive vendors	Kudos to the few CD-ROM drive vendors, such as CMS Enhancements, Hitachi, Todd Enterprises, and Chinon America, whose drives include a modest, but informative, ``Disc Loaded'' indicator on the dust door.
NEC Technologies' MultiSpin 4X Pro provides front-panel buttons	NEC Technologies' MultiSpin 4X Pro provides front-panel buttons that let you easily select fast-forward, fast-reverse, stop, and eject.
The DEC RRD43-FB and Toshiba TXM-4101L drives	The DEC RRD43-FB and Toshiba TXM-4101L drives have power buttons next to the caddy insert window, where most drives have an eject button (the eject buttons on the RRD43-FB and TXM-T4101L are below the dust door and don't have contrasting colors with the case).
Is it On or Off?	Is it On or Off? The Legacy CD-ROM 2x drive's power-switch indicators reverse the ``0'' and ``1'' on the top cover of the drive compared to what's indicated on the switch itself.
Roll Call Of CD-ROM Drives Tested

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