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Video: The only CDROM with a Turbo button! (Patreon)

Published:
2023-09-08 21:51:23
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Didn't have time for early access at all on this one because my life has just been an absolute whirlwind lately, it's been over three weeks since my last video so I just put it out publicly already. At least my sewer is getting replaced on Monday!

Files

The only CDROM drive with a Turbo button!

You thought they were only for Pentiums! Creative disagreed. Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cathoderaydude Tip me: https://ko-fi.com/cathoderaydude Chapters: 00:00 Intro 06:00 The Infra product line 07:25 Hardware overview 13:00 The remote control issue 20:30 Feature demo 29:37 Bad feature demo 37:22 Complaints 39:05 The turbo button 42:55 Benchmarks 47:10 How does the IR work? 50:53 Conclusions 52:21 Correction 54:09 Outro

Comments

timixretroplays

Youtube seems to have silently eaten my comment there, and as a game controller collector I wanted to share some info on that gamepad shown early on. I don't think it's actually a Creative product per se - the exact same thing was also sold as (at least) the Agiler Joypad, and by Suncom as the SFX Plus for Mac. (If you search for these on eBay you'll see the similarities!) I'm like 80% sure it was actually a rebadged Rockfire product (edit: 100%! see below); you might never have heard of them, but Rockfire made those dark green USB to gameport adapters that are all over eBay, and they also made a ton of early gamepads for other brands - including Trust, Panova, Radio Shack, Speedlink, and possibly (I think) Dexxa and Genius. Creative did actually make their own gamepad: the Gamepad Blaster... or the Creative Cobra... the box had a lot of words on it, and second hand listings these days feature some mangled mix of those. It was a pretty ordinary digital gamepad with both gameport and USB versions, and a Cobra II that added a thumbwheel in the middle. The gameport versions also had an extra gameport socket on the back, I guess in case anyone was silly enough to buy two of them and wanted to daisychain them off a single port on a PC. They're not super comfortable, if your hands are big enough to reach all the buttons then the giant blob of plastic that houses the gameport socket on the back will definitely get in your way. That's true even of the USB versions - they didn't update the shape to get rid of it, they just blanked it off and left it there. At least they're relatively rare - I've only ever seen them on eBay in Europe, so it sounds like Creative were definitely picky about what markets they bothered selling in. Edit: Found it! The original Creative Gamepad as shown in this video is actually a rebadged Rockfire Silver Hawk. Look them up on eBay, you'll see it's identical.

Adam

Listening to this video via a Creative Soundblaster Z SE PCIe soundcard

Torbjörn Lindgren

I doubt Creative Labs built any of their CDROMs but they didn't need to, all the "functionality" is in the firmware - the standard practice is that they get a "default" firmware bundle from the OEM which allows changing identifier and various flags. If you paid a bit more you got the full firmware bundle with source for all or almost all the firmware - a number of "premium" vendors like Plextor used this improve high-speed digital ripping on all their drives for example (and that Creative drive you showed likely also had similar tweaks). Usually the connections for all these controls are still there on the PCB to avoid having to make different models for computer and audio usage. The firmware options decides what is enabled, but it's ultra rare that they bother disable those. I suspect the analog and digital volume controls are likewise both exposed and can be enabled/disabled in the firmware. So technically it was probably not THAT hard to create the INFRA series - I suspect the analog volume control got repurposed as the IR input - which likely also explains the low sample rate and why repeat didn't work - and the rest is just firmware. Offloading all the decisions to the PC might have been necessary due to not enough cpu power in the drive, but it might also simply have been cheaper (firmware development is way more expensive than PC software development). Wonder if Creative Labs managed to get a patent on this combo, that could explain why no one else tried to iterate on it.

zephyrmo

Annoyed I didn't think SCSI. I was guessing some insane audio signalling.

Danny Forche

Does anyone know the actual model number for these? I wanted to look on the Japanese auction sites to see if there were any for sale over there, but searching "Creative CD-ROM" doesn't really turn up much. Interestingly, I did find this: https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e1079233334 That appears to be a bog-stock CD-ROM but it has the digital volume buttons. No IR or other buttons (not even a play button), but it's got those same two volume buttons as the IR model shown in your video. So I guess Creative was always doing that. At any rate, if you can check the label of those drives and see if there is an actual model number (like the one I linked is "CR-581-B") that would be great

stuckforever

Very amused that Brad Sucks has become the defacto music to showcase things with. I've listened to his stuff for damn near a decade and am happy to hear it whenever it pops up

Zorin

I had to tell you, I really loved this video. It's so interesting to look back on a product that had features that seem to make NO SENSE AT ALL to a modern eye, but back then were absolutely wonderful to have. SO MANY times in the late 90s and early 00s when I used any game or software that needed to have a CD in, I wished I could slow down my drive so it wouldn't be so loud. Pretty much the ONLY thing that benefitted from full speed was copying bulk data off burnt CD-Rs. Most games, etc. by then copied their most critical data to the hard drive and didn't need high speed CD access. So yeah, keep knocking it out of the park. :)

Evan

I absolutely had a CD explode on me. It was a 56x drive and the disc was Worms: Armageddon. Probably 2001-2002. The disc wasn't damaged to my knowledge (before exploding, that is). Fragments of the disc shot out the front; one hit my leg and left a mark (didn't break the skin). I had to take the drive apart to get the rest of it out. I got the publisher to send me a new copy of the disc.