Flood

When I was a kid I wanted a CD-ROM drive bad. Like, really really bad. Our Mac LCII was fine, but its tiny internal 80 megabyte hard drive left many things to be desired. So I spent a long time researching drives and decided I really wanted an NEC 3XP:



It was super fast, as the "3X" in its name implies, and spun discs at three times the usual rate. There was even software written to specifically take advantage of the 3X speed of the reader (incidentally, 1X implies a transfer rate of about 150K per second, which is the rate needed to transfer CD audio, but is generally far too slow for most software applications nowadays, which is why CD drives now typically run at 32 to 48X).

Trouble is, these things advance so quickly that everyone started manufacturing 3X drives, and soon thereafter, 4X, 6X, 8X, and faster. I ended up suckering out and getting a regular old 2X drive, which served my needs just fine.

It was, in fact, the only CD player I had, which meant it served to load computer software and play music CDs. Despite the awkwardness of listening to music at the computer (and the computer alone), I went and started buying music anyway. The first CD I bought was They Might Be Giants' album Flood, which I am listening to now, which prompted this blog post. :)