History (1991): And Now WORM Compact Disk

We were used to have sizes to refer to in optical disks: 12, 5.25 and 3.5 inches, soon 2.5, 12cm CD-ROMs that could only be read.

But now here comes a recordable CD-ROM, and the term of CD WORM or CD-R (CD-Recordable).

This isn’t truly new since already last year, the Japanese company Sony had shown at the CeBIT a Yamaha pre-mastering station on a WORM media originated from Taiyo Yuden.

But this time, it looks a bit different. Just the list of companies implied can give you an idea: 3M, DEC, Elektroson, Hewlett-Packard, Jet Propulsion Labs, JVC, Kodak, Mammoth Microsystems, Microware, Optimage, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Taiyo Yuden and Teac. Here are the prestigious members of a group named the Frankfurt Consortium that is trying to establish a recording standard for this type of support, just like the High Sierra Group for ordinary CD-ROMs.

The aim is to write 650MB on a 12cm WORM optical disk in just 30mn, and to offer it to ECMA and next summer to ISO for standardization.

The CD-A format would already conform with MS-DOS and Unix OSs. It also should include CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA and CD-I standards within Philips and Sony’s Orange Book norms that define physical characteristics of write-once compact disks.

Compared with magneto-optical disk systems, CD-Rs ought to be much cheaper. At the last Japan Data Show in Tokyo, JVC showed a CD-WORM recorder for $3,800 in a half-height 5.25-inch form factor, a SCSI interface, a 300ms access time and a 154KB/s transfer rate. Mitsumi is also working on this type of recorder. Ricoh who still is in R&D has announced a disk with a hybrid use, half CD-ROM, half WORM. Pioneer Electronic Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) should also introduce its own CD-WORM recorder before the end of the year. It can also play ordinary CDs. The company will also begin production of CD-WORM media.

After Taiyo Yuden who actually manufactures close to 40,000 disks per month, TDK unveiled at last Comdex the specs of its CD-WORM media, with a 12cm but also 8cm diameter.

Videodisks also seem to evolve towards the same type of erasable writable support. Pioneer introduced the LaserRecorder to record 32mn of movies on its 12-inch disks. It is expected to replace videocassette recorders. The unit will cost ¥4.2 million in Japan and rewritable video disks ¥150,000.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠47, published on December 1991.