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The first interactive multimedia CD-ROM (1989)

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  • Опубликовано: 14 авг 2024
  • A look at the first ever audio CD containing an interactive multimedia computer program -- Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by Voyager in 1989 using Apple's HyperCard, running here on a Mac Classic with an external SCSI CD-ROM drive.
    Time flow:
    0:00 Introduction
    0:38 SCSI CD-ROM drive
    2:07 Installing the driver
    4:19 Playing an audio CD
    5:00 The first IMCD
    7:09 HyperCard
    9:39 A Pocket Guide
    10:30 Beethoven's World
    11:49 The Art of Listening
    12:22 A Close Readng
    13:26 The Ninth Game
    19:27 Multimedia Beethoven
    21:17 The 74-minute CD myth
    22:37 Shut down
    #beethoven #cdrom #mac

Комментарии • 243

  • @zorka4098
    @zorka4098 2 года назад +119

    I like how the newspaper article reported: a "mouse," the Macintosh's interactive pointing device...with a technique called "clicking." The quotes identifying the procedure as something foreign is fun to read today.

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад +17

      One of my earliest computing memories was sitting down at a C64 with a light-pen and asking why some Geos feature wasn't available to me. My dad explained that _that_ was for something called "a mouse," which we didn't have.
      I also remember asking my mom what "e-mail" meant. She was working a civilian contracting job for the government and had access to email before it was in the vernacular for the rest of us. My how those tables have turned! haha

    • @globanusopp3046
      @globanusopp3046 2 года назад +8

      And soon this will change again it seems as the next generation transitions to pure consumerism and tiny touchscreens.

    • @borlibaer
      @borlibaer 2 года назад +3

      @@globanusopp3046 I call them the "dumped down, on the fly consumer generation". It becomes more and more worse from generation to generation. And it was worse from the beginning already.

  • @Eyetrauma
    @Eyetrauma 2 года назад +78

    Man this takes me back, I can’t imagine how much effort it took to construct some of these stacks when you consider the limitations on the computers they used to assemble them. Controlling the audio CD via a XCMD is pretty clever, kinda like those old interactive laserdiscs.

    • @jasonblalock4429
      @jasonblalock4429 Год назад +4

      It still blows my mind that the original Myst was made in Hypercard.

  • @natebell4764
    @natebell4764 2 года назад +60

    really cool they were able to preserve Beethoven's voice and implement it in the game. I always wondered what he sounded like.

    • @vwestlife
      @vwestlife  2 года назад +33

      Wunderbar!

    • @Time4Technology
      @Time4Technology 2 года назад +23

      Yes, was very nice of Beethoven to join a recording session at this age.

    • @BratislavMetulskie
      @BratislavMetulskie 2 года назад +6

      @@Time4Technology Ganz Richtig.

  • @spongbros
    @spongbros 2 года назад +36

    This is absolutely the sort of thing that Douglas Adams would have hailed at the time as an exciting development in interactive multimedia; even featuring in the documentary Hyperland. That and the Dirk Gently novels showed an interest in connecting the works of J.S. Bach with the then-new concept of hypertext.
    That "Ninth Game", though, is an unpleasant reminder of high school music theory lessons.

  • @StevenSmyth
    @StevenSmyth 2 года назад +28

    Hypercard came with a Home stack, so it wants to know where that is. It's more than likely in the Hypercard folder on the hard drive. Good video.

  • @sophist1cated
    @sophist1cated 2 года назад +41

    There were some magic in those days. Got my first CD-ROM in 1994, only a double speed, but it was still something special. I still own my first Software-Disc, a CD with hundreds of shareware & free games.

    • @Boemel
      @Boemel 2 года назад +6

      woah i remember getting a 56X to play games along with my Voodoo 3! And i upgraded to 128MB Ram. boy was i spoiled.

  • @MichiganPeatMoss
    @MichiganPeatMoss 2 года назад +28

    Recall the "luxury" of: "I can play music CDs on my computer", and it was independent of the CPU for the most part. LOL

  • @krz8888888
    @krz8888888 2 года назад +17

    Very Encarta like, impressive for 1989

  • @jonglass
    @jonglass 2 года назад +19

    The Voyager Company produced a lot of really good multimedia CDs back in the day. My personal favorite was "For All Mankind", a multimedia version of the movie by the same name. I only had a demo, but could never find the full version for sale anywhere. But even the demo was amazing.
    As to where "Home" is, Home is the default Hypercard stack that loads at launch up of Hypercard. It generally contains essential scripts that all stacks share. It was typically located directly in the Hypercard folder, or a folder inside it. If your Hypercard app can't find it, it might be in the wrong place. (One thing the Home stack contains is paths to all Hypercard stacks, which is essential for things to run properly inside Hypercard)

  • @f-22r
    @f-22r 2 года назад +12

    I loved this educational method and wikipedia is no real substitute for it.

  • @pauldziejman
    @pauldziejman 2 года назад +8

    That dithering effect you are talking about is a process called "halftone". It's how black and white newspapers used to print photographs.

  • @8_Bit
    @8_Bit 2 года назад +8

    I'm very surprised to see an explanation of the mouse and 'a technique called clicking' in an article from 1990, 7 years after the Lisa, 6 years after the Mac, 5 years after the Amiga, Atari ST, and Windows 1.0 etc. Thanks for this fun demonstration on authentic hardware!

    • @vwestlife
      @vwestlife  2 года назад +8

      The release of Windows 3.0 in 1990 was the first time most PC users really had a reason to buy a mouse. So it was still a fairly new concept at the time, especially to the readers of a non-technical newspaper like the LA Times.

    • @MrDuncl
      @MrDuncl 2 года назад +2

      The expensive Hewlett Packard Logic Analyser we had at work back then had a CRT based Color Touchscreen. The equally expensive CAD systems I used had Graphics tablets with a (wired) pen. Later ones had Mice that needed a special reflective mouse mat with a coloured check pattern for the mouse to pick up on. It wasn't really obvious which technology was going to win back then. As we know the Touchscreen ended up winning :-)

  • @uhfch2358
    @uhfch2358 2 года назад +5

    Anything before Windows 95, nearly all computer related activity was done strictly by hobbyists or business execs, rather than the general public. I started with the Atari ST. My first computer game on CD was a game called Burncycle (1994). Check it out. It’s so rare to see this old tech up and running again. Very cool.

  • @analogidc1394
    @analogidc1394 2 года назад +16

    The CD drive cover opens like my old JVC cassette deck! Interesting video, thanks.

    • @und4287
      @und4287 2 года назад +5

      Many bookshelf systems also have this type of CD player

  • @themaritimegirl
    @themaritimegirl 2 года назад +19

    I would have guessed the "Where is home?" prompt meant for you to choose a place on the hard disk to store temporary files, which perhaps would have avoided the missing button error, but the programmers sure didn't consider how a non-programmer would interpret it.
    Edit: I see in another comment that it's a Hypercard thing.

  • @alphabeets
    @alphabeets 2 года назад +5

    Damn. This video made me feel really old. I remember those days very well. I spent a LOT of money buying the next product that pushed the limits a little more each time. It was slow but it was interesting to live through that time.

  • @ScarletSwordfish
    @ScarletSwordfish 2 года назад +8

    As a kid I had the Mozart disc from this series, but I never actually played it on our Mac. I always wondered what the random German phrases at the end of the audio tracks were for. I had no idea they were for a HyperCard game! I'll have to see if I still have it somewhere.

  • @stheil
    @stheil 2 года назад +13

    Haha the voice saying "Ungezogen" all of a sudden was very unexpected XD

    • @f3liscatus
      @f3liscatus 2 года назад +8

      Amazingly most of the German here is completely understandable, unlike the German they put into (most) Hollywood movies. :D

    • @stheil
      @stheil 2 года назад +2

      @@f3liscatus Yeah true, the amount of garbage or completely nonsensical "German" I've heard in movies is huge. This here is just a bit funny because it uses archaic words/expressions but is otherwise perfectly fine

    • @globanusopp3046
      @globanusopp3046 2 года назад

      @@stheil "Ungezogen" is not archaic though. It's just not the right context and of course the pronunciation is a little off.

    • @stheil
      @stheil 2 года назад

      @@globanusopp3046 Well the word itself isn't but I don't think anybody would use it as an exclamation like that

  • @AMDRADEONRUBY
    @AMDRADEONRUBY 2 года назад +12

    Really interesting CD-ROM was useful. I Love how you explain the CD-ROM. Have a nice Thursday Kevin.

  • @djlucasd
    @djlucasd 2 года назад +10

    A standalone video about obsolete compression methods/formats would be cool!

  • @jacobansari7994
    @jacobansari7994 2 года назад +2

    I love your content. I initially wasn't sure if your style appealed to me or not, but your sincerity, knack for focusing on interesting tidbits and ability to choose fascinating and sometimes weird (in a good way) subject matter made me a believer . Please keep up the good work.

  • @dlarge6502
    @dlarge6502 2 года назад +6

    I want to learn more about this "idea" thing in music that the CDROM was going on about, it was actually trying to teach me how to learn to understand the music as more than simply nice sounding noises.

  • @larrylarry1
    @larrylarry1 2 года назад +16

    Home is where the heart is. Great video! Informative and enjoyable.

  • @therealbluedragon
    @therealbluedragon 2 года назад +12

    I love early CD-ROM software. It’s so creatively weird.

    • @therealbluedragon
      @therealbluedragon 2 года назад +1

      ??? I grew up through the CD-ROM era, I have all the context I need thanx.
      Maybe I used the wrong word? I intended to describe it as ‘creatively weird’.

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад +1

      @Dixie Paste I don't think corny, or weird, would be inaccurate.
      I was there for it, and I've gone back and watched lots of Computer Chronicles episodes since, where I've seen the industry pondering their new abilities during that era. You could really see everyone trying to figure out what to do with this new medium. Everyone knew it was going to be ground-breaking, but didn't yet have a handle on how to harness it.
      The software that came out on early CD-ROM was clearly a first stab at it. Like, yes... I would _definitely_ prefer to read three paragraphs of text at a time, with a 2-second delay between pages, than just walk over and pick up a physical encyclopedia. And of course I need the phone numbers of everyone in the USA, searchable. I can't believe I've gone this long without being able to print maps of European cities in 150 dpi onto letter-sized paper. And I can do ALL of this, for just $600 in hardware, and $300 per disc? Crazy!
      It _was_ weird.

    • @EgoShredder
      @EgoShredder 2 года назад +1

      @Dixie Paste Ultimately its up to the individual to choose their own words, otherwise it starts to become all about "correct speech" and things are bad enough as it is on that score.

  • @Markimark151
    @Markimark151 2 года назад +7

    I remember when our elementary school’s Macs had an external CD drive, but it was tray loading. And there was a selector switch because it used up the parallel port, and you needed to switch back to use the color printer! That’s how far back technology was during that time!

    • @vwestlife
      @vwestlife  2 года назад +3

      That's odd because Macs don't have parallel ports. But some printers did connect via SCSI, so that's probably what you were referring to.

    • @Markimark151
      @Markimark151 2 года назад +3

      @@vwestlife don’t know exactly what model of the color Macintosh I used, but I remember the switchbox in that computer lab, because it was sharing parallel, and there were adapters, because printers didn’t have network connectivity back then.

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад +4

      Yeah, I can't imagine what you'd be referring to either. Old Macs, before the iMac, had SCSI and serial ports and ADB ports, and that's it. The mouse and keyboard connected to ADB, printers and modems connected to the serial ports, and SCSI devices connected to the SCSI port (obviously.)
      By the time the iMac came out, they were dropping the legacy ADB, serial, and SCSI ports for USB and Firewire. There wasn't anything in between, that I'm aware of, that either a printer *or* CD-ROM would connect to. I've never seen a serial interface for a CD drive, and SCSI wasn't a common connector for printing, and couldn't be hot-swapped through a switch-box, but could be daisy-chained, which negates the need for switching anyway.
      I guess it's _possible_ that they could both use a networked AppleTalk interface, but then, again, there wouldn't be any need to switch between them.
      No ideas on that one.

    • @Markimark151
      @Markimark151 2 года назад +2

      @@nickwallette6201 because Apple had to use stupid proprietary ports for their devices, our school had a parallel to probably SCSI converter for multiple peripherals. This is why we used a switchbox in the early days of school Mac computers. CD drives, printers, even Zip drives used parallel. Apple is notorious for overpricing their Apple branded peripherals and monitors!

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад +3

      @@Markimark151 Well, … no. In The _early_ days, there wasn’t anything *but* proprietary connectors.
      ADB was Apple’s equivalent to PS/2 ports, which weren’t anything “standard” except that it was what IBM introduced on their PS/2 line of computers. The rest of the industry copied it, but not until well after Apple had standardized on their own connector. They could’ve abandoned it and gone with PS/2, but it wasn’t any better, and they had their own legacy of devices by then.
      Their serial ports were no less and no more standard than PC-style parallel and serial ports. At that point, there wasn’t anything inherently special or significant about RS-232, and IIRC, Apple serial was based on RS-428, which was also pretty much an arbitrary choice. Many other computers used one or the other, or something entirely different. It was ALL a crapshoot.
      SCSI was, of course, SCSI. It wasn’t unique to Apple, and PC land also used it. As did Atari, Amiga, lots of Euro and Asian microcomputers, and so on. It wasn’t as common in PC land, because SCSI cards weren’t cheap, and that’s why parallel devices were even a thing to begin with. It was a cheap alternative to SCSI. But SCSI was better than parallel in every single way except cost. SCSI was faster, had better error checking, a standard command set, was based on a port that was… you know… actually designed for bi-directional transfers, didn’t lock the computer in a busy-loop while waiting for data, and worked on computers other than PC-compatibles.
      The only thing remotely “Apple-proprietary” about those SCSI devices was the DB-25 connector. Even that wasn’t exclusively Mac-centric, it’s just that Centronics or the HD50 connectors were a little more common on the PC side. That’s also arbitrary, though, and adapters were simple passive devices, or you could just use the appropriate cable that had the connectors you needed - which is something you had to consider anyway, since there were more then a couple possibilities. But you were never stuck without an option to convert between them, except with the rare HVD signaling that you might find on higher end cards.
      It’s REALLY not fair to dog on Apple for their proprietary connectors, though. EVERY manufacturer was making it up as they went along. If Atari or Commodore had been the winner of some of those early rounds, we would be in the same boat as we were with IBM vs Apple.
      AND, once the industry collaborated on standards, Apple was the first one to use it. And boy did they go gung-ho. USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt, DVI … any time something open came out that did it better, they dropped their old connector and _went for it._ For better or worse. Sometimes the PC crowd barely even adopted it (like Firewire) and people assumed it was “an Apple thing.” But it wasn’t. They were just the only ones who took up the mantle.

  • @DerekPower
    @DerekPower 2 года назад +13

    Ah yes, The Voyager Company, which now lives on as ... The Criterion Collection

  • @uxwbill
    @uxwbill 2 года назад +5

    The very first thing I thought of upon seeing this was Microsoft Beethoven. (It was advertised on the Microsoft Works multimedia edition CD.) How interesting that the two programs were closely related to each other.
    I have a hard time imagining that anyone with a CD-ROM drive wouldn't have also had a hard drive system. Speedy CD as I remember it was also available for DOS and Windows.

  • @fluffycritter
    @fluffycritter 2 года назад +5

    I love how the article about the CD-ROM has to explain what a "mouse" and "clicking" are, and makes it sound like they're a Mac-specific thing.

  • @IkanGelamaKuning
    @IkanGelamaKuning 2 года назад +6

    The only channel which covers same interest as mine. Audio/Video & computing.

    • @aziztcf
      @aziztcf 2 года назад +3

      Check out Cathode Ray Dude.

    • @IkanGelamaKuning
      @IkanGelamaKuning 2 года назад +1

      @@aziztcf ok I'll pay a visit soon.

  • @bf0189
    @bf0189 2 года назад +5

    It made me realize how much we take for granted the amount of knowledge and information we have at our fingertips. Yeah you could go to a library borrow an encyclopedia then look for books on a particular subject but it's so much easier these days. That said the advantage of the old way was there was far less misinformation, propaganda and fake news.

    • @MrDuncl
      @MrDuncl 2 года назад +1

      Information arrived in different ways. Computer Shopper magazine (which I subscribed to) was about 500 pages of which about 300 were adverts showing all the latest stuff available like this CD ROM Drive. If you weren't sure it was for you, you could go to a computer shop and try things out.

  • @EgoShredder
    @EgoShredder 2 года назад +4

    It seems the CD was correct in its use of this: All Together. Altogether means “completely,” “all things considered,” or “on the whole.” All together means “everyone together” or “everything together.”

  • @zbutsam
    @zbutsam 2 года назад +6

    Where can I find a "mouse" with this revolutionary "clicking" technology?

  • @casualretrocollector
    @casualretrocollector 2 года назад +8

    Thumbnail has a nice vintage vaporwave feel to it :)

  • @Petertronic
    @Petertronic 2 года назад +5

    Hypercard itself was a revolutionary system at the time

  • @dormcat
    @dormcat 2 года назад +4

    Still have its MS Windows edition bought in 1993 with "Microsoft Home" sticker on the box (later titles e.g. Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring had "Microsoft Home" label printed instead). Choosing The 9th as the first interactive title was both a blessing and a curse: being the greatest and most recognizable classical music piece ensured its popularity and as a milestone of multimedia development, but as the 74 minutes of The 9th was THE standard for audio CD format (arguably insisted by the chairman of Sony) this left VERY little space for program files.

    • @vwestlife
      @vwestlife  2 года назад +3

      Except in this case it's only 70 minutes long, not 74.

  • @twocvbloke
    @twocvbloke 2 года назад +6

    I think the first interactive CD I ever used was David Macaulay's "The way things work", which I also had as the (huge!) book at the same time too, so getting to have the sounds and animations on the PC version was rather fun, and of course we also had one of the Encarta discs which had all kinds of interactive stuff too... :)

  • @globanusopp3046
    @globanusopp3046 2 года назад +2

    I was screaming "Passage 1" at the screen - but I'm glad you got it super wrong so we could hear the crazy german impersonations. "Unmöglichchc mine Kind" "Ichch gratooliere"
    FYI a dotted rhythm basically means that the notes are not equally spaced but are more wildly distributed across the measure(s).
    ding__dading_dingda vs. ding_ding_ding_ding
    Great video!

  • @JohnSmith-xq1pz
    @JohnSmith-xq1pz 2 года назад +9

    1989 when I was but a young lad

  • @foxyloon
    @foxyloon 2 года назад +2

    2:19 "System Software 1,337K" Couldn't help but have an amused smile from seeing that.

  • @Vuusteri
    @Vuusteri 2 года назад +16

    Interesting. I've done videos for all Voyager's classical music CD-ROMs, which were branded as Microsoft Multimedia CD-ROMs. Other titles included Stravinsky, Mozart, Schubert and Strauss. There was also one for Dvorak, which wasn't part of Microsoft Multimedia series. Haven't been able to find it to date.
    Didn't realize Beethoven's 9th was the first multimedia CD-ROM ever. Like you said, 1992 version by Microsoft was identical and can be seen here:
    ruclips.net/video/Q_BhXEQF8Kk/видео.html

  • @Cloudschatze
    @Cloudschatze 2 года назад +3

    This was a fun watch - thank-you! In case it's of further interest, Apple's "CD-ROM Explorer" (1988) provides a number of conceptualized ideas and examples of what interactive multimedia was then imagined to become. Given some of the similarities, it would be interesting to know if that may have influenced or inspired the early Voyager Company productions.

  • @makssquivias2118
    @makssquivias2118 2 года назад +3

    a completely unique experience I really loved your extremely entertaining video I once had a cd rom and they were the funniest things in the world I miss that

  • @benjaminsmith3625
    @benjaminsmith3625 2 года назад +2

    I quite like the way the two HyperCard files could fit on one floppy each, obviating the need to have a data CD drive!

  • @TubbyJ420
    @TubbyJ420 2 года назад +3

    Memories of early 90s school, there were 2 of those macs and 1 cdrom drive on a table with wheels to move from class to class. There may have been 1 other library computer and that was it for the entire school to share. Nowadays we all have a smartphone in our pocket lol

  • @kenhaze5230
    @kenhaze5230 2 года назад +4

    Cryptic error messages with no obvious ill effects-glad SOME things never change.

  • @Juanguar
    @Juanguar 2 года назад +15

    9:50 what do you mean copyrighted ?
    Isn’t Beethoven public domain ?

    • @Techdisk42
      @Techdisk42 2 года назад +27

      The composition is, but the *recording* may not be.

    • @Juanguar
      @Juanguar 2 года назад +10

      @@Techdisk42 ah I see

  • @dintyshideaway9505
    @dintyshideaway9505 2 года назад +9

    For me this was one of your more enjoyable videos. I had an SE30 with System 7, which I switched from, because of multimedia, to a 386DX when the prices came down. I often looked at Hyper Card and dreamed about its potential, and now I know. Funny how Microsoft showed such a consistent lack of creativity. It was around this time Microsoft wanted to de-bundle Office with new PCs. Licensing this CD Rom title with no real changes was one the the many throw away titles that would replace Office in new PCs of the day.

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад +2

      Not sure I would agree with this take. From the earliest days, software was really expensive. You didn't buy an IBM PC and get Lotus 1-2-3 with it, for free. And Office as a complete product, didn't happen for a while after Word, Excel, etc., were available independently.
      It was somewhat common to buy a computer with _some_ valuable software included, but not at all compulsory, and I don't think Microsoft had a lot to do with that decision. They made OEM software packs available, and the vendors decided what to include in their more premium bundles, or like Gateway, they gave you a certain credit with which you could choose what was important to you.
      My first PC purchase was an AST Advantage Pro 486SX/25. It came with MS-DOS 5, Win 3.1, and MS Works. If I had wanted to buy up to one of the more expensive models, I'm sure there was a $2000 system that shipped with Office. But that was out of my budget, and if it weren't, and I needed it, I could've just bought Office myself. You're not getting _anything_ for free, after all.
      CD-ROM drives, and multimedia bundles, often came with a whole collection of things. Partially to sweeten the deal, when you were going to be laying out $300 or more, and to give you _something_ to play with out-of-the-box. Also as a kind of sampler buffet, to show you what that expensive new hardware could do, and give you inspiration on what to look for next. It was usually a rather well-rounded bundle of multimedia showcases, like this, and some games, and reference software like Encarta, or BodyWorks, or whatever. It wasn't meant to be the end-all of CD-ROM titles. Just a teaser of what was out there. Not every title was a hit, but then, not everyone was into the same things.

    • @MrDuncl
      @MrDuncl 2 года назад +1

      @@nickwallette6201 I paid £100 for Microsoft Works for Dos back in the early 1990s. One of the reasons Amstrad PCs were so popular in Europe was that they did come with a decent selection of software pre-installed.
      At around the same time a colleague bought a different brand of PC for about £1000 which was advertised as coming with £700 worth of software. When it arrived it didn't have it and after sending several letters he discovered that the company had gone bankrupt. He contacted his credit card company who on hearing about the missing £700 of software refunded him that so he ended up being very happy with his £300 PC.

    • @3rdalbum
      @3rdalbum 2 года назад

      Hypercard makes it amazingly simple to write software using a language that's English-like, and construct user interfaces with drawing program tools. My father and I used to write Hypercard stacks with zero programming knowledge; he animated short stories in it and even wrote a stack to calculate the train fare between two stations in my city! Even with the feature set stuck in the late 1980s and being unable to run natively on any computer since the 1990s, there are still people writing software in it and I honestly still yearn for the simplicity of its language.
      There's a RUclipsr called Gruz who does occasional videos where he explores old Hypercard stacks, worth checking out.

  • @MarcelHuguenin
    @MarcelHuguenin Год назад +1

    That was an interesting and entertaining video. You've kept quite a collection from those days. I was not in Mac at that time, started with Commodore in '79. Do recognise everything though.

  • @anthonydotmoe
    @anthonydotmoe Год назад +2

    I was thinking that CD ROM drive looked familiar. Then you showed it was made by NEC! The lid and tray look exactly like the one in the NEC PC Engine CD System

  • @icraftcrafts8685
    @icraftcrafts8685 2 года назад +2

    What a cheeky question section on that cd :)

  • @segamanxero
    @segamanxero 2 года назад +4

    Robert Winter forgot to add a button on a page of that hypercard stack. On that Beethoven's World card I don't see anything obvious that appears to be missing in respect to the table of contents or navigation. There is a missing left arrow in the bottom right, but I dont think that is it as it is the first card or page of many.

  • @BilisNegra
    @BilisNegra 2 года назад +3

    22:12 It's actually 68:24 according to the grand total of the tracks as shown on the back on the CD case. The software track also adds up to the software player's reported total, it seems, just as it's the case with many regular audio-only CD players.

  • @CARLiCON
    @CARLiCON 2 года назад +3

    7:47 VW discovers the 1989 inspiration for Vaporwave AESTHETIC cover artwork from 2011 Floral Shoppe album..

  • @lawrenceh1405
    @lawrenceh1405 2 года назад +3

    A little Goo-Gone would probably clean up that scuzzy hard drive nicely. Just sayin'....
    [Rimshot] That joke never gets old! OK, I do remember getting a CD-ROM drive on my computer at work - I'm thinking ca. 1995. It was a big deal at the time, especially when I figured out I could also play audio CDs on it. Remember those days? When the Personal Computer (and Mac, too) was a new and exciting world?

  • @andlabs
    @andlabs 2 года назад +6

    Ah track indexes (which is how I'm assuming is how they're doing the navigation within a track); now *that's* a relic of the 80s =P
    There are also multiple different versions of StuffIt Expander's .sit file format, and it appears that newer versions of StuffIt just silently dropped support for and will not touch older files, even back in the 90s. I had to figure this out maually about a decade ago when I was helping someone else get the Classic Mac port of Super Hang-On from Macintosh Garden working in an emulator. I'm hoping with modern projects like libarchive this can be improved on for modern computers at least... no idea if libarchive supports StuffIt yet though. (Also waiting for smoother experiences: 'solid' rar archives, lha.)

  • @albear972
    @albear972 2 года назад +9

    You better have a big pocket to fit your portable Macintosh Classic and the 5 pound CD-ROM. 😁
    Oh man! Around that time I had bought my first computer when I was 19 years old. It was A Macintosh SE that I bought used. That thing had 2 disk drives and no HD. 😐 Even back then it really was a piece of crap. And it's silly to see how crazy companies went with that multimedia stuff.

  • @stereophonicstuff
    @stereophonicstuff 2 года назад +3

    In a way, these interactive CDs gave a glimpse of the internet without actually needing the internet. I had a number of encyclopedia style interactive CD-ROMs back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s but they definitely weren’t as interesting as this one.

    • @MrDuncl
      @MrDuncl 2 года назад +2

      The idea of playing music through your internet connection was fantasy up until the advent of Broadband. Hard Drives were also a fraction of the size of CDs. I recall thinking that a sure fire way of stopping software piracy would be to put the software on CDs with some kind of packing code as people wouldn't have a hard drives big enough to store 600Mbytes of data.

    • @ChristopherSobieniak
      @ChristopherSobieniak 2 года назад +1

      @@MrDuncl I lived through all this.

    • @CARLiCON
      @CARLiCON 2 года назад +2

      yes, this is exactly how the internet worked, the "program" was essentially a web page except that the HTML scripts link to media files on the CD, rather than on a server

    • @ChristopherSobieniak
      @ChristopherSobieniak 2 года назад +2

      @@CARLiCON I remember buying an audio CD that had such a program that made it runnable on a computer that way.

  • @3rdalbum
    @3rdalbum 2 года назад +1

    Multisession only became a thing in 1991 and later, with PhotoCD and then later with CD-R, although pressed CDs eventually became able to use multiple sessions for Red Book audio and CD-ROM data.

  • @DejanTesic
    @DejanTesic 2 года назад +3

    Wunderbar! Excellent video!

  • @shkeni
    @shkeni 2 года назад +2

    I love using my "mouse" with its attendant technique of "clicking". Fascinating stuff.

  • @OuterGalaxyLounge
    @OuterGalaxyLounge 2 года назад +1

    Haven't heard the term Stuffit Expander in 30 years. I used to have computers like these at work.

  • @HalfBlindGamer
    @HalfBlindGamer Год назад

    Very cool look at these early CD ideas. Reminds me of audio cassettes hiding little programs on them, or the other way round. Though these were mostly used as easter eggs or extra's, less to work in tandem. CD-i was kind of build around ideas like this. There was also a 'CD-i Ready' format which let you either load the program to listen/view the content on a CD-i compatible system as a program, or you could just pop it into a CD player to listen to the music.

  • @williamschneider3355
    @williamschneider3355 2 года назад +2

    Although that wasn't Myst, I was still stunned watching this video to see a Classic could run a CD-ROM. Summer of 1991 I was trying to decide between a Mac Classic and a Packard Bell PC. Stupid me bought the PC.

  • @haweater1555
    @haweater1555 2 года назад +3

    14:10. Don't I recognize that passage from Clockwork Orange?

  • @sebastian19745
    @sebastian19745 2 года назад +1

    I had Microsoft Composer Collection, Beethoven, Mozart and Strauss. I got them in a bundle of used CDs with many CDs from magazines. At the time my computer was too slow aso I never installed and used them. May be a good time o test them now on my retro systems since I think they can be found on internet.

  • @MadameSomnambule
    @MadameSomnambule Год назад

    Ah, Voyager. I had one program made by them as a kid, and that was Circus! from 1994 or so. I had a lot of games and programs from the 90s and some of them made a pretty big deal about being multimedia. And keep in mind, I played half of those old games between 1998 and 2003, so hearing sound and music in a game like Oregon Trail II seemed pretty trivial to me but I imagine it was pretty amazing back when it came out, especially if a kid played it in a school computer lab for the first time when the game was new.
    The fact the cd rom format dates all the way back to the 80s is nothing short of amazing! By the time I was little, cd roms were the norm and anyone could have a pc with a cd drive. Now we're in the days where cd/dvd-rom is limited to programs like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and a select few games like The Sims. Anything else has to be downloaded. Times sure have changed.

  • @dwindeyer
    @dwindeyer 2 года назад

    When the title says first multimedia CDROM, my expectations were pretty low. But that's pretty complete and well thought out for the first one.

  • @Terry.W
    @Terry.W 2 года назад +3

    I wonder if Alex in the Clockwork Orange has heard this..

  • @MrDuncl
    @MrDuncl 2 года назад +3

    I had to check when Philips CD-I was launched but this beat it by a year.

  • @DanOConnorTech
    @DanOConnorTech 2 года назад +3

    I thought I saw a dithered Charles Grodin

  • @Cyb3rst0rmIndustries
    @Cyb3rst0rmIndustries 2 года назад +1

    There are actually older titles dating back as far as 1984 on the IBM/X86 side, but they are almost all exclusively targeted towards libraries and academia. IIRC some of these even had sound (and required specialized hardware that basically only ran one companies line of products or in some cases just a single suite of CD ROM software). Basically the CD ROM server would be installed somewhere and client PCs would remote into them. There's an episode of Computer Chronicles from the time period that goes further back. If you strictly mean on personal computers, targetted for at home use then this probably is the first. I've tried to hunt down some of those super earlier CDs, its not easy and its not even due to price, they just don't show up.The last one I got my hands on was an interactive encyclopedia disc from 85 for $10.

  • @TheLtData
    @TheLtData 2 года назад +2

    Nice video! I had one of these on Mozart, early ninetees.

  • @nickwallette6201
    @nickwallette6201 2 года назад +3

    I've got a couple of old NEC SCSI CD drives, that one included. Most of them don't seem to work anymore. I'm hoping to resuscitate them some day.
    Also: Man, I'm really glad that USB happened. 25-pin cables suuuuuuuck.

    • @EgoShredder
      @EgoShredder 2 года назад +1

      I've got a ton of different SCSI and Serial cables and adapters if anyone is interested! 😁

    • @3rdalbum
      @3rdalbum 2 года назад

      Doesn't USB have 16 pins or thereabouts now? :P

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад

      @@3rdalbum Only USB-C++ SS v3.7 ToGo.

  • @UpLateGeek
    @UpLateGeek 2 года назад +3

    The key to the future of computing, eh? All 1.9MB of it. I mean, he wasn't right, but he wasn't exactly wrong. Future games included data and CD audio tracks, and hypertext certainly was the future of the web.
    Who knows, if John Sculley had stayed on as Apple's CEO, perhaps they wouldn't have spiralled into almost bankruptcy, instead focusing on the growth of the web earlier. I think they were already moving towards PowerPC when he left, so that still would've happened, but it would've been less likely he could've successfully bought NeXT, so most likely he would've had to make Copeland work. Or he could've had more success with the project than his successors.
    Either way, Apple would be a very different company today if he could've translated that vision of the future into a more focused direction for the company.

  • @FoxMulder78
    @FoxMulder78 2 года назад +2

    Home is where the heart is.

  • @DaleFrewaldt
    @DaleFrewaldt Год назад

    It's incredible, to me, how fast computing has gotten. 47 seconds to transfer less than 2 MB of data. I find myself having to double, sometimes triple, check that files have transferred on modern devices when the file sizes are small like that.

  • @CARLiCON
    @CARLiCON 2 года назад +3

    11:32 sketch theme almost sounds like a midi file, btw 1989 Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia is claimed to be the first "multimedia" CD-ROM encyclopedia. The LA Times article said your disc was the first "classical" IMCD, is it documented anywhere that this is also actually the first IMCD of any kind?

    • @3rdalbum
      @3rdalbum 2 года назад +1

      Hypercard had a built-in function where the programmer could specify what notes to play, for how long, and with what instrument. So, a little like MIDI but vastly simplified and only one note at a time. This didn't sound like any of the built-in instruments (Boing, Harpsichord or Flute were the options IIRC) but maybe there was a way to add more.

  • @ErikZarth
    @ErikZarth 2 года назад +4

    I remember buying a few music CDs in the late 90s that had an interactive portion to them.
    They were generally pretty underwhelming.

    • @CARLiCON
      @CARLiCON 2 года назад +2

      You might be thinking of Enhanced CD aka CD-Extra

  • @AntonKarpuzikov
    @AntonKarpuzikov Год назад

    wow! that's impressive how much stuff they put in this cd

  • @catalinbadalan4463
    @catalinbadalan4463 Год назад

    "The voice you're now hearing is Richard Kiley...we spared no expense!"

  • @rillloudmother
    @rillloudmother 2 года назад +2

    Using Ludwig van like that! He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music!

  • @ericbechler9903
    @ericbechler9903 2 года назад +4

    Nice vwestlife 😃

  • @andrewstones2921
    @andrewstones2921 Месяц назад

    Love your videos. I had a Mac Classic. You said your mac classic could display 2 colors, I’m sorry to tell you it can’t only display one colour, white. The black is just areas of the screen that are not changed to white. If it can display 2 colors then one of those is displayed when it’s turned off!

  • @MatroxMillennium
    @MatroxMillennium 2 года назад +1

    I've got a couple of similar NEC CD-ROM drives (same form factor but aesthetically different housing) but unfortunately both are broken and won't read discs.

  • @Lungdum
    @Lungdum 2 года назад

    PC Engine CD game No-Ri-Ko with showa idol Noriko Ogawa 小川範子, was a multimedia game released in 1988 on CD-ROM, a year before this software.

  • @Nomad-Rogers
    @Nomad-Rogers 2 года назад +1

    The product made by apple that I have ever had any interest in is The iPod Classic 5-7th generation (I think I better bite the bullet and buy one before they become even more rare and the price goes up)

  • @twocvbloke
    @twocvbloke 2 года назад +1

    Distraction from the IMCD content, there is actually a differentce between "Altogether" and "All together", but you are right in saying that it should have been "altogether" in that bit about his Viennese concerts, as it means "in total", whereas they put it as "with each other" with the two separated words, so bad grammar on their part, god I need to get a life....... :P

  • @hyakin7818
    @hyakin7818 2 года назад +2

    Now i know for what that cable is

  • @KRAFTWERK2K6
    @KRAFTWERK2K6 2 года назад +2

    Ah the CD ROM drive is completely silent? Single-Speed confirmed. Super slow but thankfully super quiet. Just like the CD Drive of the Sega Mega CD.

  • @saxman112
    @saxman112 2 года назад +1

    Dang, what a way to start off interactive CDs as we’d come to know them now! Also, interesting how the Mac’s own audio couldn’t be re-routed to those external speakers 🤔

    • @vwestlife
      @vwestlife  2 года назад +4

      The Mac does have an audio output -- I connected it to the external speakers for the power-on beep. But unless you add a mixer, you can't hear both the Mac's audio and the CD drive's audio through them at the same time.

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад +3

      @@vwestlife On that note (and I'm sure Mr. Vwestlife is well aware), the Apple Design speakers had two audio inputs specifically for this purpose.

  • @haweater1555
    @haweater1555 2 года назад +2

    9:45. Can RUclips declare a nearly 200 year old composition as under copyright protection?

    • @kaitlyn__L
      @kaitlyn__L 2 года назад +3

      The specific recording and performance are much more recent.

    • @haweater1555
      @haweater1555 2 года назад +1

      @@kaitlyn__L Yes, I realize that the specific performance of this public domain work is copyrighted, but to a computer's ear it's going to be difficult to differentiate typical arrangements of major classical music pieces and which orchestra is performing them.

    • @theverysinfulcaterpillar5788
      @theverysinfulcaterpillar5788 2 года назад +3

      Unfortunately, to a computer this is easy. It's to human beings that it can be difficult to tell the difference.

  • @Madness832
    @Madness832 2 года назад +2

    Are the audio tracks subdivided into indexes? I've actually never found a CD that has that feature!

    • @SUP3RP3DR0L1V3
      @SUP3RP3DR0L1V3 2 года назад +1

      Me neither. There aren't a lot of standalone CD players that support it, though.

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад

      It wouldn't matter either way. The software is searching for M:S:F, not track + index.

  • @dxer22000
    @dxer22000 2 года назад +1

    I'm surprised the CD ROM drive still works. Usually the optical pickups fail in old CD players & since they're no longer made, the CD player becomes a door stop (can no longer be repaired)

  • @crescentfresh8001
    @crescentfresh8001 2 года назад

    Man, Voyager had some great stuff. I have their Residents: Freak Show CD-ROM in my collection, and when I look through the Voyager catalog in the box, I end up wanting to buy everything in it, lol. (that said, they could have improved their longbox package design. Gorgeous on the shelf, cheap garbage holding the disc in place)

  • @EnigPartyhaus
    @EnigPartyhaus 2 года назад +3

    A very PC Engine resemblant drive with the windowed dome, neat

    • @nickwallette6201
      @nickwallette6201 2 года назад

      Guess who made both of those drives? And guess what interface the *NEC* PC Engine used to connect the CD-ROM expansion? ;-)

  • @megamanfan3
    @megamanfan3 2 года назад

    5:01 I find it rather interesting that the 9 on that CD booklet is almost the same as the 9 used on Mac OS 9.

  • @thehunterofdeath2180
    @thehunterofdeath2180 2 года назад +1

    I remember those computer back on school apple 🍎 computer no cd a flapping disc that was in the late 80s 😂

  • @georgeprice4212
    @georgeprice4212 2 года назад +1

    I’m surprised that he didn’t mention the ELO cover as an unusual thing! 😂

  • @dutchbeef8920
    @dutchbeef8920 9 месяцев назад

    I remember a mini-disc based multi media system

  • @lepot23
    @lepot23 2 года назад +1

    Dotted rhythm means choppy, or syncopated. Number one was not. It was just regular 8th notes.