October 5, 2025 • 23 mins
Storage didn’t just get bigger; it got personal. We rewind to the late ’90s and early 2000s to unpack the clash between Iomega’s Zip drive and the laser-lit world of the CD—two formats that taught a generation how to back up, carry, and truly own their data. From the pain of 30‑floppy installs to the thrill of dropping a 700 MB burn into a jewel case, we dig into what made each medium take off, where they stumbled, and why their lessons still shape how we save files today.
We start with the super floppy dreams behind Zip 100—engineering choices, bold “Click. Zip. Done.” marketing, and the way creatives, students, and IT teams built daily workflows around blue drives and rugged cartridges. Then we confront the trust crisis of the “click of death,” the lawsuits and lost archives, and how fast‑rising alternatives—CD‑ROM, cheaper external hard drives, and the first USB sticks—changed the game. Along the way, we share real‑world snapshots: college labs checking out Zip disks like library cards, E3 press kits living on cartridges, and NASA quietly slotting Zip into space for portable transfer.
Next, lasers take center stage. We chart the CD’s leap from digital audio to data with 650–700 MB per disc, the fall in drive costs, and the cultural surge fueled by Myst, Encarta, and Wing Commander. CD‑R and CD‑RW flipped the script by giving anyone the power to publish, archive, and share—burning playlists, handing off portfolios, and shipping software at scale. We revisit the AOL CD blitz, the DVD capacity boom, and the slow fade of optical drives as broadband, flash storage, and cloud sync took over. Through it all, a throughline emerges: good storage changes behavior. When saving is simple, people back up. When media is portable, they create and share more.
By the end, you’ll see why Zip and CD were more than formats—they were habits, rituals, and signals of identity in an era when data became a part of daily life. Hit play, ride the nostalgia, and take away practical lessons on redundancy, media reliability, and the tradeoffs behind every storage shift. If this brought back memories of your first burn or the dreaded click, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to keep the conversation going.
Interviews with Tech Leaders and insights on the latest emerging technology trends.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Art By Sarah/Desmond
Music by Joakim Karud
Little chacha Productions
Juan Rodriguez can be reached at
TikTok @ProfessorJrod
ProfessorJRod@gmail.com
@Prof_JRod
Instagram ProfessorJRod
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:05):
I can do that.
SPEAKER_01 (00:28):
And welcome to Technology Tap.
I'm Professor J.
Rod.
In this episode from Zip Driveto CD, the battle for the future
of storage.
Let's get into it.
(01:07):
Welcome back to Technology Tap.
I'm your host, Professor J-Rodd,and today we're traveling back
to the fantasy crossroads incomputer history.
The late 1900s and early 2000s,an era where technology was
evolving at breakneck speed.
Computers were faster, graphicsricher, and software heavier
than ever before.
(01:27):
But storage, storage was stuck.
The 1.4 megabit floppy disk,once the king of convenience,
can barely hold a singlehigh-resolution photo.
Files were getting bigger.
Software suites like MicrosoftOffice, multimedia programs like
Adobe Photoshop, and games likeMist, Quake, and Half-Life were
(01:48):
ballooning in size.
Enter two Titans of storage,each promising salvation.
The zip drive, a boldreinvention of the floppy disk
from a company named iOmega,offering massive capacities at a
time when 100 megabytes seemedinfinite.
And the CD ROM, born from acollaboration between Sony and
Phillips, transforming compactmusic discs into vessels for
(02:11):
data, games, and multimedia.
Today we'll explore who createdthese technologies, how much
they cost, what made themsuccessful or fail, and how they
shaped competing for an entiregeneration.
The end of the floppy era.
By the mid-1990s, 3.5 inchfloppy disks had reached its
limit.
(02:32):
At 1.44 megabytes, it simplycouldn't keep up.
Programs like Microsoft Office97 came on 30 floppies.
A single PowerPoint where imagescould fill a disk.
Backup strategies became jokes.
No one wanted to swap 40floppies to save their hard
drives.
The world needed somethingfamiliar but bigger.
(02:54):
Users didn't just want morespace.
They wanted the same experienceas the floppy.
Simple insert, drag, save,eject.
No formatting tricks, no specialtapes or drives.
This was the gap that IOMegaCorporation saw.
Founded in 1980 in Royal Utah, IOmega started small, building
(03:16):
backup products like theMerminian box, which used
flexible magnetic plattersprovided by Eric Cushions.
These products were fast andreliable, but expensive, aimed
at business, not home users.
By the early 90s, IOMA'sengineers became dreaming of a
super floppy, somethingaffordable for customers, but
powerful enough forprofessionals.
(03:39):
Their mission?
100 megabytes in your pocket.
The birth of the zip drive.
In 1994, IOMega has released thefirst zip drive along with its
zip 100 disc.
Storage 100 megabytes.
That's roughly 70 times thefloppy.
Technology, advanced magneticcoating, price heading
(04:01):
possession positioning, and arugged cartridge.
Design sleek, blue, portable,about the size of a paperback
novel.
Price, the drive itself costs$199, and each disc costs$19.95.
For many users,$20 per disc feltsteep until they realized it can
(04:21):
store the entire hard drive.
I remember buying one for theoffice at work, and it was very,
very bright.
Like it was amazing when itfirst came out.
It connected via parallel port,slow by modern standards, but
universal in 1994.
Later versions added SCSI, USB,and even internal IDE models.
(04:43):
The marketing blitz.
i Omega didn't just launch aproduct, they launched a
movement.
Their marketing was bold,cheeky, and confident.
The tagline, click, zip, done.
TV commercials showed userstossing floppies in the trash.
Magazine ads promise, forget thefloppy, meet the zip.
(05:04):
And it worked.
By 1996, the zip drive waseverywhere, bundled with gateway
PCs, sold in Best Buy Owls, andadopted by universities for
student backups.
Real World Memory.
College computer labs stackedwith shared zip drives.
IT departments issued discs tostudents like library cards.
By 1997, iOmega claimed to haveshipped over 12 million drives
(05:28):
and 100 million discs.
Everyday life with the zipdrive.
For many users, the zip drivewas freedom.
Graphic designers use it to movePhotoshop projects between home
and office.
Students stored turnpapers,early websites, and entire
portfolios.
Business used zips for backups,cheaper than tape, easier than
external drives.
(05:49):
I remember those days.
In 1998, journalists coveringthe E3 Expo carried zip discs
loaded with press kits, one discfor each company.
Zip drives became a badge oftech credibility.
If you had one, you were seriousabout computing.
The click of death.
But success hit a ticking timebomb, literally.
(06:12):
Users began reporting a loudclick click-click sound when
inserting disks.
Soon after, total data loss.
The infamous click of death wascaused by drive misalignment,
which would physically damagediscs, making them unreadable on
any drive.
iOmega initially denied theproblem, calling it user error.
(06:33):
Lawsuits follows.
Tech magazine published exposes.
In 1999, a graphic design firmlost a client's entire archive,
hundreds of hours of work, tothe click of death.
Trust evaporated.
Competitors and the fall.
Other storage options wererising fast.
CDR drives were becomingaffordable, holding 650 to 700
(06:58):
MB per disc.
External hard drives weredropping in price.
USB flash drives arrived around2000, starting at 8 MB, but
climbing rapidly.
I Omega tried to fight back.
The ZIP 250 came out in 1998,250 meg per disc at$250 cost per
drive.
(07:18):
And the zip 750 in 2002, 750 MB,USB 2.0 backward compatible.
But it was too late.
By the early 2000s, the IOMegaglory faded.
The super floppy era ended asquickly as it began.
Reflection (07:37):
The zip drive was the bridge recrossed and then
left behind.
The legacy of the zip drive.
Despite its decline, the zipdrive deserved credit.
It bridged the gap between thefloppy and the optical disc.
It introduced customers to highcapacity removable storage.
It made back up a householdidea, not just a corporate one.
(07:59):
Today zip drives are acollective items, a symbol of
the late 90s computing boom.
Fun fact (08:04):
NASA used zip drives on the International Space
Station in the early 2000s forportable data transfer.
From floppies to zip, we movedhundreds of megabytes at a time,
but just as Omega reached itspeak, another technology, sleek,
shiny, and read by lasers, waswaiting in the wind.
(08:28):
A shiny new medium, the compactdisc, was born from
collaboration.
In 1979, Phillips and Sonyjoined forces to create a
digital audio format to replacevinyl records and cassettes.
By 1982, the first commercialCDs hit the market.
Billy Joe's 52nd Street wasamong the first albums released.
(08:50):
Each disc stored 74 minutes ofdigital audio, about 650 MB of
data, a stunning figure comparedto the 1.44 MB floppies.
Engineers chose 74 minutes so aCD can hold Beethoven's 9th
Symphony in full at Sony'sco-founder Akill Morella's
(09:14):
request.
Turning music into data.
Engineers quickly realized thepotential beyond music.
By the mid-80s, Sony andPhillips introduced the CD-ROM,
the compact disc read-onlymemory, a format for computer
data storage.
Each CD-ROM can hold around 650to 700 MB, the equivalent of 450
(09:37):
floppies.
The first CD-ROM drives appearedin 1985-86, primary for business
and academic use.
Cost around$1,000 for the driveand$500 to$100 per disc.
Early adopters, encyclopedia,database, and reference tools.
The Groller Electra ElectronicEncyclopedia in 1995 was one of
(10:00):
the first customer CD ROMsfitting the entire library's
worth of text on one disc.
And I remember when I firstbought my first CD ROM, I bought
it at Electronic Boutique onFifth Avenue in Manhattan.
And it cost me with a sound card$385.
(10:22):
I think that was in 1994, 1995.
(10:45):
No, wait, I bought it at CompUSA, not electronic boutique.
Comp USA, a big store, had ahuge store on Fifth Avenue in
the 30s, somewhere, a long timeago.
Alright.
CD ROMs go mainstream.
By the early 1990s, CD ROMsbecame a household name.
Drives dropped by price.
By 1993, an internal CD-ROMdrive cost about$200.
(11:08):
Wow, they ripped me off.
And pre-recorded disc around$20to$30.
Software publishers embraced theformat.
Microsoft and Carta, amultimedia encyclopedia, came
out, missed a groundbreakingCD-ROM game with rich visuals
and audios.
The Sims, SimCity 2000, and WingCommander 3.
(11:29):
Oh, I loved Wing Commander.
Maybe I'll do a story on WingCommander.
They had um the guy from StarWars was the voice of Wing
Commander.
Luke.
Yeah, he he would voice that.
I think I'm gonna do an episodeon Wing Commander.
All leverage the capacity forfull motion video and sound.
Nostalgia.
Installing Mist in 1993 feltlike stepping into the future.
(11:52):
Lush graphics, ambientsoundscapes, all from one
gleaming disc.
The rise of the CD burner.
At first, CD ROMs wereread-only, but users wanted to
create their own disc.
CDR Recordables introduced in1990, mass of the adaptation by
1995.
(12:12):
Drives cost$1,000, blank disccost$20 each.
By 1999, the drives dropped to$200 and discs to$1 each.
I remember we had them at theoffice, and then I don't
remember buying my first one.
I guess it must have come with acomputer, but they're the
standard now.
(12:43):
Then came the CD RW, therewritables, allowing data to be
erased and rewritten a bitslowly and less reliable.
Everyday life with the CD.
(13:26):
By the late 1990s, music fansburned album and playlists,
business distributed software onCDs.
Gamers installed titles likeHalf-Life, StarCraft, Age of
Empires 2.
Schools and universities handedout courseware CDs.
Anadult, I still remember buyingEncarta 97 in a jewel case that
(13:48):
probably said contains 32,000articles, 10,000 photos, and 50
videos.
It was the internet offline.
For home users, the CDR becamethe go-to for backup, documents,
photos, and even early digitalmusic libraries.
And one company that really tookadvantage of the CDs, hold on to
(14:09):
your hat, guys, if you remember,American Online.
American Online sent itsinstallation software on almost
every magazine that ever cameout.
Like if you were a tech and someand you went to fix somebody's
PC and they asked you, hey, canyou install America Online on my
(14:29):
PC?
All you had to do was go to uhany magazine that they had at
their house, flip to it, andmost likely you would find an
American online CD in there.
They were everywhere.
Like you like you could just goand buy any magazine, and there
was America Online CD in there.
The blitz that they made forthat campaign was absolutely
(14:51):
amazing.
Because they they put like youyou couldn't you could not see
not see uh America Online CD,they were everywhere.
So for those of you who don'tremember, they were everywhere.
Yeah.
DVD Looms CD peaks.
By 1996, the DVD arrived,offering 4.7 gig per layer,
(15:13):
seven times the CD.
Still, CDs held on.
They were cheap, familiar, anduniversal.
By 2000, over 20 billion CDswere produced annually.
That's every year, guys.
Artists released albums on CDinto the streaming era.
Software installs shipped on CDwell into the 2010s.
(15:35):
Fun fact Microsoft Windows XPshipped on a single CD just
fitting under the 700 MB rule.
The slow fade.
As broadband spread and USBdrives grew, CD lost.
Flash drives offer rewritablepocket-sized convenience,
digital download replacephysical media.
(15:57):
By 2010's laptop like Apple'sMacBook Air shipped without
optical drives.
Yeah, and that's true.
Laptops don't ship with CDsanymore.
You you have to specifically askfor it, get like a gamer PC or
buy just USB.
Like the companies will tellyou, yeah, our laptops are the
(16:19):
battery will last longer and andall that.
Yeah, because they took outeverything inside and they'll
make you buy via USB.
So I think it's I think theymake more money if you buy it
that way.
Today, CDs lived on mostly on uhas music nostalgia and retro
storage, but their influenceremains.
(16:41):
The legacy of zip and CD.
The zip drive and the CD taughtusers to own the data, to
backup, archive, and carry it.
They bridge analog and digital.
From floppy swapping to burningdiscs, these technologies gave
us a hands-on relationship withour files.
There were also uh democraticscene for the first time.
(17:04):
Anyone can publish, share, andstore gigabytes of personal
content.
And that was true.
You know, this was the the era.
I mean, it was an amazing timewhen new products were coming
out all the time.
And you know, the C the zipdrive and the CD and the DVD,
you know, they were you knowthat's when everything changed.
(17:25):
Everything, you know, youNetflix changed, right?
You you didn't have Blockbusteranymore, everything just went
digital now with the CD and theand the DVD.
You know, the zip drive,unfortunately, it it went like a
rocket, and just like a rocketdoes sometimes, just exploded in
midair and and crashed reallyhard.
(17:47):
But yeah, I remember the clickof death on on a couple of my
former coworkers when you knowit was just click, you hit it
click, click, click, click,click, and it was that's it.
It was nothing you can do aboutit.
You know, it was good, and itdid teach people how to back up,
right?
Because if you had a zip drive,you could back up your whole
hard drive, and that's andthat's when people started
(18:09):
really taking backup seriously,was because it was as with
anything, you make it convenientfor people, they would do it.
But if you make it hard, i.e.,sit there with 40 floppies
trying to back up your stuff,right?
Disc one, disc two, disc three,you know, that people are not
gonna be able to do that.
But with the zip drive and theCD, especially when the
(18:32):
rewritables came out, you know,you gave the people the
opportunity to back up theirstuff.
So this is when people startedtaking ownership for the for
their own computer, and it wasand it was a good thing as far
as as the user experience isconcerned, right?
You you were finally saying, I'mgonna take ownership of of the
(18:53):
stuff that I have, of my my harddrive, my you know, personal
space.
Because before, I mean, evennow, nobody, you know, nobody
backs up at work their theirtheir PCs.
Everything is stored you know ona server which is stored on the
cloud somewhere.
But back then, but people had toback up their stuff.
(19:14):
And you know, it's not likenowadays people will back up the
whole thing, the operatingsystem, the whole thing on these
zip drives and CDs, because whowanted to reinstall 40 disc of
Windows, you know, 95, 98?
Nobody wanted to do that.
Nobody.
So this this uh became a loteasier with the zip drive and
(19:37):
the CDs.
And you know, and it was good tosee that people were were taking
computing a little bit moreserious, but you know, they're
they're they're all gone now.
Like, yeah, I have a CD in aDVD, a Blu-ray, I think, on my
computer, and one on my laptop,but I specifically had to ask
for that on the side, right?
I I didn't it didn't come withit.
(19:59):
So nowadays they're they'regone, guys.
This is you know, it's the endof an era, you know.
You go to you know, the the CDmorphed into the DVD, the movie
industry, the music industrychanged for a little bit, right?
Companies were making millions,millions of dollars on DVD sets
and DVD movies, but everythingmoved to streaming now.
(20:21):
That's a revenue that they'velost, right?
Uh, not being able to re-youknow you can have a movie barely
make profit in the movietheater, but then make money off
the DVD, and make profit off theDVD.
You don't have that optionanymore.
That option is gone.
I mean, I'm gonna I should dothat.
(20:41):
Like how how the movies wentfrom from video to DVD, how
video renting you would makemoney, and then DVDs came out
and people would buy them, andhow that whole thing's changing
to to streaming.
And I have a I have some issueswith that also, uh, DVDs and
streaming, also, and maybe I'llmake an episode on that.
(21:04):
Yeah, but if for those of youout there who remember the zip
drives, if you rem if you haveany horror stories to tell,
yeah, let me know.
Professor Jrod at gmail.com.
I will love to hear some of yourstories with the zip drive
failures.
I'm sure there are people outthere who who who crashed and
(21:25):
burned, you know, in the earlyin the early to late 90s with
the zip drive.
Or how was the experience withyour CD ROM and your DVDs?
How did that affect?
Did you you know migrate oververy quickly with the death of
the zip drive, or did you hangin there a little bit with the
zip drive?
But all in all, that wraps it upthrough our journey through the
(21:47):
zip drive and the CD era, a timewhere storage became personal,
portable, and powerful.
The zip drive gave us capacitywe've only dreamed of, while the
CD put information, music, andmultimedia in our hands.
Together, they bridged thefloppy age and the digital
frontier, paving the way forDVDs, USBs, cloud storage, and
(22:11):
beyond.
I hope you like this episode ofTechnology Tap.
I'm Professor J Rod.
Subscribe and share with afriend who remembers burning
their first CD or hearing theclick of death.
And as always, keep tapping intotechnology and we'll see you on
the next episode.
(22:40):
This has been a presentation ofLittle Cha Cha Productions art
by Sabra, music by Joe Kim.
We're now part of the Pod MatNetwork.
You can follow me at TikTok atProfessor J Rod at J ROD, or you
can email me at Professor J RodJr.
at gmail dot com.
I can do that.
SPEAKER_01 (00:28):
And welcome to Technology Tap.
I'm Professor J.
Rod.
In this episode from Zip Driveto CD, the battle for the future
of storage.
Let's get into it.
(01:07):
Welcome back to Technology Tap.
I'm your host, Professor J-Rodd,and today we're traveling back
to the fantasy crossroads incomputer history.
The late 1900s and early 2000s,an era where technology was
evolving at breakneck speed.
Computers were faster, graphicsricher, and software heavier
than ever before.
(01:27):
But storage, storage was stuck.
The 1.4 megabit floppy disk,once the king of convenience,
can barely hold a singlehigh-resolution photo.
Files were getting bigger.
Software suites like MicrosoftOffice, multimedia programs like
Adobe Photoshop, and games likeMist, Quake, and Half-Life were
(01:48):
ballooning in size.
Enter two Titans of storage,each promising salvation.
The zip drive, a boldreinvention of the floppy disk
from a company named iOmega,offering massive capacities at a
time when 100 megabytes seemedinfinite.
And the CD ROM, born from acollaboration between Sony and
Phillips, transforming compactmusic discs into vessels for
(02:11):
data, games, and multimedia.
Today we'll explore who createdthese technologies, how much
they cost, what made themsuccessful or fail, and how they
shaped competing for an entiregeneration.
The end of the floppy era.
By the mid-1990s, 3.5 inchfloppy disks had reached its
limit.
(02:32):
At 1.44 megabytes, it simplycouldn't keep up.
Programs like Microsoft Office97 came on 30 floppies.
A single PowerPoint where imagescould fill a disk.
Backup strategies became jokes.
No one wanted to swap 40floppies to save their hard
drives.
The world needed somethingfamiliar but bigger.
(02:54):
Users didn't just want morespace.
They wanted the same experienceas the floppy.
Simple insert, drag, save,eject.
No formatting tricks, no specialtapes or drives.
This was the gap that IOMegaCorporation saw.
Founded in 1980 in Royal Utah, IOmega started small, building
(03:16):
backup products like theMerminian box, which used
flexible magnetic plattersprovided by Eric Cushions.
These products were fast andreliable, but expensive, aimed
at business, not home users.
By the early 90s, IOMA'sengineers became dreaming of a
super floppy, somethingaffordable for customers, but
powerful enough forprofessionals.
(03:39):
Their mission?
100 megabytes in your pocket.
The birth of the zip drive.
In 1994, IOMega has released thefirst zip drive along with its
zip 100 disc.
Storage 100 megabytes.
That's roughly 70 times thefloppy.
Technology, advanced magneticcoating, price heading
(04:01):
possession positioning, and arugged cartridge.
Design sleek, blue, portable,about the size of a paperback
novel.
Price, the drive itself costs$199, and each disc costs$19.95.
For many users,$20 per disc feltsteep until they realized it can
(04:21):
store the entire hard drive.
I remember buying one for theoffice at work, and it was very,
very bright.
Like it was amazing when itfirst came out.
It connected via parallel port,slow by modern standards, but
universal in 1994.
Later versions added SCSI, USB,and even internal IDE models.
(04:43):
The marketing blitz.
i Omega didn't just launch aproduct, they launched a
movement.
Their marketing was bold,cheeky, and confident.
The tagline, click, zip, done.
TV commercials showed userstossing floppies in the trash.
Magazine ads promise, forget thefloppy, meet the zip.
(05:04):
And it worked.
By 1996, the zip drive waseverywhere, bundled with gateway
PCs, sold in Best Buy Owls, andadopted by universities for
student backups.
Real World Memory.
College computer labs stackedwith shared zip drives.
IT departments issued discs tostudents like library cards.
By 1997, iOmega claimed to haveshipped over 12 million drives
(05:28):
and 100 million discs.
Everyday life with the zipdrive.
For many users, the zip drivewas freedom.
Graphic designers use it to movePhotoshop projects between home
and office.
Students stored turnpapers,early websites, and entire
portfolios.
Business used zips for backups,cheaper than tape, easier than
external drives.
(05:49):
I remember those days.
In 1998, journalists coveringthe E3 Expo carried zip discs
loaded with press kits, one discfor each company.
Zip drives became a badge oftech credibility.
If you had one, you were seriousabout computing.
The click of death.
But success hit a ticking timebomb, literally.
(06:12):
Users began reporting a loudclick click-click sound when
inserting disks.
Soon after, total data loss.
The infamous click of death wascaused by drive misalignment,
which would physically damagediscs, making them unreadable on
any drive.
iOmega initially denied theproblem, calling it user error.
(06:33):
Lawsuits follows.
Tech magazine published exposes.
In 1999, a graphic design firmlost a client's entire archive,
hundreds of hours of work, tothe click of death.
Trust evaporated.
Competitors and the fall.
Other storage options wererising fast.
CDR drives were becomingaffordable, holding 650 to 700
(06:58):
MB per disc.
External hard drives weredropping in price.
USB flash drives arrived around2000, starting at 8 MB, but
climbing rapidly.
I Omega tried to fight back.
The ZIP 250 came out in 1998,250 meg per disc at$250 cost per
drive.
(07:18):
And the zip 750 in 2002, 750 MB,USB 2.0 backward compatible.
But it was too late.
By the early 2000s, the IOMegaglory faded.
The super floppy era ended asquickly as it began.
Reflection (07:37):
The zip drive was the bridge recrossed and then
left behind.
The legacy of the zip drive.
Despite its decline, the zipdrive deserved credit.
It bridged the gap between thefloppy and the optical disc.
It introduced customers to highcapacity removable storage.
It made back up a householdidea, not just a corporate one.
(07:59):
Today zip drives are acollective items, a symbol of
the late 90s computing boom.
Fun fact (08:04):
NASA used zip drives on the International Space
Station in the early 2000s forportable data transfer.
From floppies to zip, we movedhundreds of megabytes at a time,
but just as Omega reached itspeak, another technology, sleek,
shiny, and read by lasers, waswaiting in the wind.
(08:28):
A shiny new medium, the compactdisc, was born from
collaboration.
In 1979, Phillips and Sonyjoined forces to create a
digital audio format to replacevinyl records and cassettes.
By 1982, the first commercialCDs hit the market.
Billy Joe's 52nd Street wasamong the first albums released.
(08:50):
Each disc stored 74 minutes ofdigital audio, about 650 MB of
data, a stunning figure comparedto the 1.44 MB floppies.
Engineers chose 74 minutes so aCD can hold Beethoven's 9th
Symphony in full at Sony'sco-founder Akill Morella's
(09:14):
request.
Turning music into data.
Engineers quickly realized thepotential beyond music.
By the mid-80s, Sony andPhillips introduced the CD-ROM,
the compact disc read-onlymemory, a format for computer
data storage.
Each CD-ROM can hold around 650to 700 MB, the equivalent of 450
(09:37):
floppies.
The first CD-ROM drives appearedin 1985-86, primary for business
and academic use.
Cost around$1,000 for the driveand$500 to$100 per disc.
Early adopters, encyclopedia,database, and reference tools.
The Groller Electra ElectronicEncyclopedia in 1995 was one of
(10:00):
the first customer CD ROMsfitting the entire library's
worth of text on one disc.
And I remember when I firstbought my first CD ROM, I bought
it at Electronic Boutique onFifth Avenue in Manhattan.
And it cost me with a sound card$385.
(10:22):
I think that was in 1994, 1995.
(10:45):
No, wait, I bought it at CompUSA, not electronic boutique.
Comp USA, a big store, had ahuge store on Fifth Avenue in
the 30s, somewhere, a long timeago.
Alright.
CD ROMs go mainstream.
By the early 1990s, CD ROMsbecame a household name.
Drives dropped by price.
By 1993, an internal CD-ROMdrive cost about$200.
(11:08):
Wow, they ripped me off.
And pre-recorded disc around$20to$30.
Software publishers embraced theformat.
Microsoft and Carta, amultimedia encyclopedia, came
out, missed a groundbreakingCD-ROM game with rich visuals
and audios.
The Sims, SimCity 2000, and WingCommander 3.
(11:29):
Oh, I loved Wing Commander.
Maybe I'll do a story on WingCommander.
They had um the guy from StarWars was the voice of Wing
Commander.
Luke.
Yeah, he he would voice that.
I think I'm gonna do an episodeon Wing Commander.
All leverage the capacity forfull motion video and sound.
Nostalgia.
Installing Mist in 1993 feltlike stepping into the future.
(11:52):
Lush graphics, ambientsoundscapes, all from one
gleaming disc.
The rise of the CD burner.
At first, CD ROMs wereread-only, but users wanted to
create their own disc.
CDR Recordables introduced in1990, mass of the adaptation by
1995.
(12:12):
Drives cost$1,000, blank disccost$20 each.
By 1999, the drives dropped to$200 and discs to$1 each.
I remember we had them at theoffice, and then I don't
remember buying my first one.
I guess it must have come with acomputer, but they're the
standard now.
(12:43):
Then came the CD RW, therewritables, allowing data to be
erased and rewritten a bitslowly and less reliable.
Everyday life with the CD.
(13:26):
By the late 1990s, music fansburned album and playlists,
business distributed software onCDs.
Gamers installed titles likeHalf-Life, StarCraft, Age of
Empires 2.
Schools and universities handedout courseware CDs.
Anadult, I still remember buyingEncarta 97 in a jewel case that
(13:48):
probably said contains 32,000articles, 10,000 photos, and 50
videos.
It was the internet offline.
For home users, the CDR becamethe go-to for backup, documents,
photos, and even early digitalmusic libraries.
And one company that really tookadvantage of the CDs, hold on to
(14:09):
your hat, guys, if you remember,American Online.
American Online sent itsinstallation software on almost
every magazine that ever cameout.
Like if you were a tech and someand you went to fix somebody's
PC and they asked you, hey, canyou install America Online on my
(14:29):
PC?
All you had to do was go to uhany magazine that they had at
their house, flip to it, andmost likely you would find an
American online CD in there.
They were everywhere.
Like you like you could just goand buy any magazine, and there
was America Online CD in there.
The blitz that they made forthat campaign was absolutely
(14:51):
amazing.
Because they they put like youyou couldn't you could not see
not see uh America Online CD,they were everywhere.
So for those of you who don'tremember, they were everywhere.
Yeah.
DVD Looms CD peaks.
By 1996, the DVD arrived,offering 4.7 gig per layer,
(15:13):
seven times the CD.
Still, CDs held on.
They were cheap, familiar, anduniversal.
By 2000, over 20 billion CDswere produced annually.
That's every year, guys.
Artists released albums on CDinto the streaming era.
Software installs shipped on CDwell into the 2010s.
(15:35):
Fun fact Microsoft Windows XPshipped on a single CD just
fitting under the 700 MB rule.
The slow fade.
As broadband spread and USBdrives grew, CD lost.
Flash drives offer rewritablepocket-sized convenience,
digital download replacephysical media.
(15:57):
By 2010's laptop like Apple'sMacBook Air shipped without
optical drives.
Yeah, and that's true.
Laptops don't ship with CDsanymore.
You you have to specifically askfor it, get like a gamer PC or
buy just USB.
Like the companies will tellyou, yeah, our laptops are the
(16:19):
battery will last longer and andall that.
Yeah, because they took outeverything inside and they'll
make you buy via USB.
So I think it's I think theymake more money if you buy it
that way.
Today, CDs lived on mostly on uhas music nostalgia and retro
storage, but their influenceremains.
(16:41):
The legacy of zip and CD.
The zip drive and the CD taughtusers to own the data, to
backup, archive, and carry it.
They bridge analog and digital.
From floppy swapping to burningdiscs, these technologies gave
us a hands-on relationship withour files.
There were also uh democraticscene for the first time.
(17:04):
Anyone can publish, share, andstore gigabytes of personal
content.
And that was true.
You know, this was the the era.
I mean, it was an amazing timewhen new products were coming
out all the time.
And you know, the C the zipdrive and the CD and the DVD,
you know, they were you knowthat's when everything changed.
(17:25):
Everything, you know, youNetflix changed, right?
You you didn't have Blockbusteranymore, everything just went
digital now with the CD and theand the DVD.
You know, the zip drive,unfortunately, it it went like a
rocket, and just like a rocketdoes sometimes, just exploded in
midair and and crashed reallyhard.
(17:47):
But yeah, I remember the clickof death on on a couple of my
former coworkers when you knowit was just click, you hit it
click, click, click, click,click, and it was that's it.
It was nothing you can do aboutit.
You know, it was good, and itdid teach people how to back up,
right?
Because if you had a zip drive,you could back up your whole
hard drive, and that's andthat's when people started
(18:09):
really taking backup seriously,was because it was as with
anything, you make it convenientfor people, they would do it.
But if you make it hard, i.e.,sit there with 40 floppies
trying to back up your stuff,right?
Disc one, disc two, disc three,you know, that people are not
gonna be able to do that.
But with the zip drive and theCD, especially when the
(18:32):
rewritables came out, you know,you gave the people the
opportunity to back up theirstuff.
So this is when people startedtaking ownership for the for
their own computer, and it wasand it was a good thing as far
as as the user experience isconcerned, right?
You you were finally saying, I'mgonna take ownership of of the
(18:53):
stuff that I have, of my my harddrive, my you know, personal
space.
Because before, I mean, evennow, nobody, you know, nobody
backs up at work their theirtheir PCs.
Everything is stored you know ona server which is stored on the
cloud somewhere.
But back then, but people had toback up their stuff.
(19:14):
And you know, it's not likenowadays people will back up the
whole thing, the operatingsystem, the whole thing on these
zip drives and CDs, because whowanted to reinstall 40 disc of
Windows, you know, 95, 98?
Nobody wanted to do that.
Nobody.
So this this uh became a loteasier with the zip drive and
(19:37):
the CDs.
And you know, and it was good tosee that people were were taking
computing a little bit moreserious, but you know, they're
they're they're all gone now.
Like, yeah, I have a CD in aDVD, a Blu-ray, I think, on my
computer, and one on my laptop,but I specifically had to ask
for that on the side, right?
I I didn't it didn't come withit.
(19:59):
So nowadays they're they'regone, guys.
This is you know, it's the endof an era, you know.
You go to you know, the the CDmorphed into the DVD, the movie
industry, the music industrychanged for a little bit, right?
Companies were making millions,millions of dollars on DVD sets
and DVD movies, but everythingmoved to streaming now.
(20:21):
That's a revenue that they'velost, right?
Uh, not being able to re-youknow you can have a movie barely
make profit in the movietheater, but then make money off
the DVD, and make profit off theDVD.
You don't have that optionanymore.
That option is gone.
I mean, I'm gonna I should dothat.
(20:41):
Like how how the movies wentfrom from video to DVD, how
video renting you would makemoney, and then DVDs came out
and people would buy them, andhow that whole thing's changing
to to streaming.
And I have a I have some issueswith that also, uh, DVDs and
streaming, also, and maybe I'llmake an episode on that.
(21:04):
Yeah, but if for those of youout there who remember the zip
drives, if you rem if you haveany horror stories to tell,
yeah, let me know.
Professor Jrod at gmail.com.
I will love to hear some of yourstories with the zip drive
failures.
I'm sure there are people outthere who who who crashed and
(21:25):
burned, you know, in the earlyin the early to late 90s with
the zip drive.
Or how was the experience withyour CD ROM and your DVDs?
How did that affect?
Did you you know migrate oververy quickly with the death of
the zip drive, or did you hangin there a little bit with the
zip drive?
But all in all, that wraps it upthrough our journey through the
(21:47):
zip drive and the CD era, a timewhere storage became personal,
portable, and powerful.
The zip drive gave us capacitywe've only dreamed of, while the
CD put information, music, andmultimedia in our hands.
Together, they bridged thefloppy age and the digital
frontier, paving the way forDVDs, USBs, cloud storage, and
(22:11):
beyond.
I hope you like this episode ofTechnology Tap.
I'm Professor J Rod.
Subscribe and share with afriend who remembers burning
their first CD or hearing theclick of death.
And as always, keep tapping intotechnology and we'll see you on
the next episode.
(22:40):
This has been a presentation ofLittle Cha Cha Productions art
by Sabra, music by Joe Kim.
We're now part of the Pod MatNetwork.
You can follow me at TikTok atProfessor J Rod at J ROD, or you
can email me at Professor J RodJr.
at gmail dot com.
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