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  • [keyboard clicking]

  • [soft jazz music]

  • Greetings and this is kind of a monstrous LGR thing.

  • This is the NEC MultiSpin 4Xc quad-speed

  • external CD-ROM changer.

  • And this holds seven CDs inside

  • of one beefy piece of 90s hardware.

  • This is the model number CDR-C302,

  • and was released at a suggested retail price

  • of 350 US dollars in the summer of 1995.

  • This is something I have wanted to mess with

  • ever since I was a kid and saw them

  • in various electronics stores.

  • I mean, at the time I didn't even have a CD-ROM,

  • so the fact that there were these

  • gigantic CD-ROM changers

  • (laughs)

  • talk about forbidden fruit,

  • holy grail kind of material

  • at least for 10-year-old me.

  • Now, sure, audio CD changers are nothing special.

  • In fact, every time I go thrifting

  • I'm seeing all sorts of different CD changers,

  • like those that load from cartridges

  • and have gigantic spindles where you can fit

  • hundreds of CDs like these from Pioneer

  • or even those with spinning trays.

  • But a CD-ROM changer, now that is

  • not as common, at least in my experience.

  • I don't know. I just didn't see these as much.

  • I've never used one of these external ones,

  • and it's not to say any of these things

  • are rare necessarily, but they're not

  • the most immediate thing that you might go for

  • if you're wanting to install a CD-ROM

  • on your retro computer nowadays.

  • I mean, seriously, this is just silly.

  • However, silly 90s hardware is kind of my forte,

  • and even though I don't cover them super often,

  • so are CD-ROM games with tons of CDs in the box.

  • Games like Black Dahlia, Ripper, and Phantasmagoria

  • pretty much sold themselves on being multi-disk games.

  • Phantasmagoria in particular is the one

  • that comes to mind with this,

  • because the game was famous for having seven disks.

  • Let's go ahead and get this brand new one unboxed,

  • because, yeah, it's still sealed.

  • I happily bought this quite a while ago on eBay,

  • and was just like: one of these days I'll get around to it.

  • And this is that day.

  • (plastic tearing)

  • Oh yeah.

  • (plastic tearing)

  • All right, got some more information here.

  • It does store up to seven CD-ROMs.

  • And look at all these other things.

  • This is a quad-speed unit, by the way,

  • and it uses SCSI-2 to connect.

  • They did release...

  • NEC that is, released a whole bunch

  • of these different disk changers like this

  • for PCs back in the day.

  • And this just happens to be the largest one

  • that I'm aware of, so that's why I wanted it.

  • Oh, that's a...

  • (laughs)

  • That's a comforting note.

  • Look at this.

  • Caution: use of control of adjustments

  • or performance of procedures other than those

  • specified herein may result in hazardous radiation exposure.

  • I mean...

  • All right.

  • We got some cables here.

  • There's a SCSI cable, 50-pin.

  • It looks like SCSI-2.

  • We got a power cable, and the drive itself.

  • Look how neatly that is taped up.

  • Man, it's like a gift-wrapped present.

  • Whoa! Look at that.

  • It looks so good.

  • That is a fine-looking piece of hardware,

  • brand new, not yellowed at all, which is great.

  • I was wondering if it would hold up nicely.

  • This part is, feels like painted metal.

  • This plastic on front could very well yellowed.

  • I've seen some yellowed units online.

  • This one didn't.

  • Oh yeah.

  • (laughs)

  • This just screams greatness.

  • I don't know.

  • Something about these industrially designed

  • kind of CD-ROM units, it reminds me of much older CD-ROMs.

  • This was manufactured in June 1995.

  • One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

  • That's awesome.

  • Little rubbery buttons, they feel okay.

  • Volume wheel there,

  • 3 1/2-millimeter audio jack for headphones.

  • I cannot wait to use this.

  • We've got a note here on some very neon paper.

  • "Attention. Read me first!"

  • Let's see. What do we got?

  • Some notes here for Macintosh Quadra users,

  • other Macintosh users, and Corel's SCSI-2 diskette

  • does some things that don't really seem to pertain to me.

  • All right, I'm not gonna be installing this on a Macintosh.

  • We're gonna be going with Windows 98, because I want to.

  • Actually, maybe Windows 95, I don't know yet.

  • This is cool.

  • What is all this?

  • Oh, that has pretty much lost every...

  • (rubber band snaps)

  • Ooh, yep, that's just a very gummy rubber band.

  • Even after 23 years those can perish.

  • Apparently their own interface didn't have

  • the 50-pin high-density connector,

  • which my Adaptec card does have that.

  • So let's see here.

  • A Macintosh driver on a disk.

  • Got a warranty card here, or really a registration card

  • for warranty and other such things.

  • This is an interesting form factor for instructions.

  • It's more like a calendar.

  • Okay, so Windows drivers are installed

  • through the Corel driver kit.

  • Okay, well...

  • Aha, I feel a disk in here.

  • Corel SCSI Version 2.

  • (disk thumps)

  • There we go, (laughs) a very nondescript

  • 3-1/2-inch high-density floppy diskette right here.

  • Welcome to Corel's SCSI.

  • You can use virtually any SCSI device and

  • ASPI-compatible host adaptor with Corel SCSI.

  • What is this?

  • We've got a mounting plate or something.

  • No, no, no. This is an adaptor.

  • Aha.

  • Inside the bag we get a smaller bag,

  • and inside the smaller bag, a three-inch CD-ROM adaptor.

  • How handy.

  • It did say we would need one of those

  • in order to use them in here so I'm glad it came with that.

  • I gotta see what's inside this though.

  • It's just so large.

  • Let's see what we got here.

  • Well, it's so colorful.

  • Wow.

  • It's a very pretty internal set of goods here

  • even though we're not really seeing a whole lot.

  • How appealing. (laughs)

  • Well, all right. Well that's that.

  • Let's go ahead and get this installed into the...

  • or connected to the Lazy Green Giant

  • Windows 98 PC and see what happens.

  • So as far as getting this connected, really it's just

  • a matter of plugging in SCSI cable to both sides.

  • And I'm needing to use one of my other cables

  • because the one it came with does not have

  • the proper 50-pin connector on the other side

  • to plug into the PC, but that's okay.

  • All the feature-selection switches

  • should be in the correct spots

  • for what we're gonna be doing.

  • So the termination is on.

  • Parity check is on.

  • SCSI ID number is default.

  • Power goes right here.

  • Got the correct voltage, of course.

  • And I decided to go with Windows 95.

  • So I've got that...

  • (card thumps)

  • Got that on an SD card right there.

  • So that's gonna go right there.

  • (thunky-thunk)

  • Just curious if I can power on

  • the drive before powering the PC.

  • Let's see here.

  • (drive clicking, clunking, whirring)

  • (yep, it just keeps going!)

  • Well that was quite an assortment of sounds.

  • (laughs)

  • So yeah, you just press the button.

  • It will eject the inner tray out

  • into the actual ejection tray thing.

  • And then you can press another one

  • and it'll swap the inner tray part and there we go.

  • Yeah, nice little labeling right there.

  • I was wondering how that handled things.

  • All right, well let's try some games out.

  • Yeah.

  • This is gonna be awesome.

  • All right, let's power it all on.

  • (whirring)

  • (rattling)

  • That's a good sign, I guess.

  • And it is detected.

  • (beep)

  • And Windows 95.

  • [Windows 95 startup sound plays]

  • So first order of business is get this

  • Corel software installed, I suppose,

  • although it might have detected something already hopefully.

  • Yeah.

  • (laughs)

  • It has seven individual CD drives.

  • Okay. Let's get this disk going, see what we get.

  • This looks ridiculous.

  • Come on now.

  • This appears to be largely for

  • getting this to work under DOS mode.

  • I don't know.

  • Let's just try it without doing anything else.

  • So I'm just going to try a single CD-ROM game at the moment.

  • I'm gonna go with StarCraft.

  • Okay.

  • Now I'll know how to run so just to try to refresh,

  • see what happens.

  • Absolutely nothing.

  • So chances are we do need that software.

  • Load it in high memory.

  • Why not?

  • Okay, I just restarted

  • and the drive started doing crazy things so...

  • (error sound)

  • Still got nothing.

  • I don't know.

  • Reinstalled it following all the instructions

  • in the manual, nothing.

  • So I'm gonna try Windows 98.

  • Rather annoyingly, a lot of the stuff it's referring to

  • in here does not come on the disk at all.

  • All right, once again we have these seven drives detected.

  • (chime)

  • Not accessible.

  • All right. So I've got the LGR Woodgrain 486 going over here

  • since Windows was not having fun with this drive.

  • And I don't know if you saw that

  • but the SCSI adaptor installed will actually

  • automatically see this as the other one did, but...

  • And this is what I'm going to be using

  • to get the drive working, this EZ-SCSI Standard Edition.

  • Thank goodness for things like this.

  • Honestly, this is gonna be way easier,

  • at least if it works with this drive.

  • It should. It has, in my experience

  • with other external CD drives.

  • Yeah. There is the host adaptor.

  • It found that on port 340-H.

  • And now it's gonna be scanning for anything plugged into it,

  • which it has seen this, which is good.

  • That's a good sign.

  • Here we go.

  • What is the first drive letter

  • you would like EZ-SCSI to reserve for your CD-ROM drive?

  • So I'm gonna start with...

  • Actually, I'm gonna go with E because

  • I have an internal drive as well

  • so we're gonna start there, make all the mods for me.

  • (beep)

  • And we're gonna do the same thing over here.

  • (beep)

  • Okay.

  • And we'll go ahead and restart.

  • (laughs)

  • Yup.

  • So we've got seven targets.

  • And yes, awesome, awesome, awesome.

  • So it has assigned drive letters

  • to each of the seven individual drives here.

  • And I've still got Gravis UltraSounds stuff.

  • I'm gonna go ahead and...

  • (typing)

  • change that really quick (laughs)

  • cause we don't have a Gravis UltraSound installed.

  • At this point we should just be able to

  • stick all of these CDs in here.

  • There's disk one.

  • And there's disk two.

  • And here's disk three.

  • Number four.

  • Yeah. That's looking better.

  • I've got the Sound Blaster Pro going now.

  • So we will have sound.

  • Disk five.

  • (laughs)

  • It's a ridiculous process.

  • Disk six.

  • Oh my goodness, finally disk frigging seven.

  • There we go.

  • We got all seven disks of Phantasmagoria installed

  • so we should just be able to go over

  • to each individual drive by letter, starting with E.

  • And this will be disk one.

  • So it'll switch over to that and read slowly.

  • (laughs)

  • And there we go.

  • It's actually not terribly slow.

  • I mean it is a quad-speed drive running over SCSI-2

  • so it should be relatively quick.

  • But yeah, switching is a bit of an ordeal

  • because of course it has to physically

  • take something from that internal caddy

  • and move it out into this loading tray up to the laser.

  • And then there we go.

  • So that's disk two.

  • And then G, of course, would be disk three and so on,

  • all the way through the alphabet up to disk seven.

  • This does lead to a bit of a limitation

  • in the sense that we're not gonna be able

  • to physically move one disk internally from...

  • Say if we wanted to move disk four

  • over to drive one or the E drive, we can't do that.

  • Disk one is always gonna be E.

  • So it depends on the software really.

  • Let's just ahead and load up Phantasmagoria here and see.

  • (typing loudly)

  • Straightforward installation for this,

  • it's only needing disk one in order to do that

  • so we're gonna actually have to run the game and...

  • (laughs)

  • What is that?

  • SIERRA/SCARYDOS?

  • (laughs)

  • Oh, I've never actually seen the

  • DOS version of Phantasmagoria installer folder.

  • That's...

  • (laughs)

  • That's wonderful.

  • (scary music)

  • (roar)

  • (laughs)

  • What a game.

  • (dramatic music)

  • Such dramatics.

  • I'm gonna go ahead and start a new game here

  • and get to the chapter selection screen.

  • So if we just started with one it'll continue on.

  • Each chapter is on each disk

  • so let's just skip to chapter two

  • and see if it'll figure out that...

  • (laughs)

  • No it doesn't.

  • I kind of suspected that just due to what I knew

  • about the way that this works internally.

  • In fact I think it was on the box.

  • All right, so you can kind of see here

  • there are these trays in the back

  • that each one of the CDs is inserted to

  • whenever you insert it into the drive.

  • But then this actual loading tray

  • will go and retrieve one of the disks

  • and bring it up to the laser.

  • The thing is, it only does that

  • whenever you're doing the eject and insertion process.

  • So in order for me to get CD two

  • to this game to be able to read it,

  • I'd have to physically swap it over,

  • which completely defeats the purpose

  • of having all these multi-disk games

  • on a multi-CD-ROM changer like this.

  • If it had some sort of other mechanism

  • which would actually take the CD

  • and then move it over to the laser assembly

  • so it would read it from the same drive letter,

  • then that would be ideal for F&V games,

  • multi-disk games like this that just swap out

  • and don't actually ask for another drive letter.

  • Since this is looking for the same drive letter

  • every single time a disk swap occurs,

  • then we're stuck with this limitation.

  • All right, let's get to some acting.

  • - In here, in the bedroom.

  • - What are you doing?

  • - [LGR] Role-playing, gosh.

  • - I'm starting my new book.

  • - So what?

  • Did you go buy the drain cleaner?

  • - [LGR] The drain cleaner.

  • Oh, this is a great scene.

  • - What? Drain cleaner?

  • - [LGR] And by great I mean terrible.

  • - Don't be coy with me.

  • I asked you several times to go buy me drain cleaner.

  • Now did you do it?

  • (LGR laughs loudly)

  • - Well, I know you said the sink was clogging your darkroom,

  • but you never asked me to go get you any drain cleaner.

  • I would have remembered...

  • - [LGR] Oh, it's just the most

  • endearing kind of terrible.

  • Put your laptop away.

  • You can check your AOL email address later.

  • You don't have mail.

  • Most unfortunate that I'm not gonna be able

  • to actually play through this.

  • I mean I could.

  • I would have to physically swap the disk out like a caveman.

  • What's the point of that?

  • Honestly, I didn't even think about that

  • when I picked this one out online.

  • I just remember seeing it back in the day,

  • saw it show up on eBay (laughs) and didn't think about it.

  • I'm like: "holy crap, it's great."

  • "I want this thing."

  • And plus it looks neat.

  • Doesn't it?

  • It just looks great.

  • But for multi-disk games it's kinda pointless,

  • at least if it's a game like this that is gonna look

  • in the same exact drive designation

  • every single time it's swapping a disk.

  • So if anybody has any recommendations

  • of a retro drive that would accomplish this...

  • I mean I know of a few myself,

  • but if you used one back in the day, do let me know.

  • I would appreciate any kind of recommendations

  • cause honestly, I would love to get

  • a six or seven-disk changer that actually lets me

  • swap between those and keep the disk

  • in the same drive letter every single time it swaps disks.

  • Kind of a shame we couldn't get it working in Windows

  • but we'd be in the same boat anyway.

  • It works the same, either operating system.

  • But hopefully you still had fun with the unboxing

  • and set up and everything else that we were doing.

  • I enjoyed it anyway.

  • And if you did, perhaps you'd like to stick around.

  • There are new videos every week here on LGR.

  • And as always, thank you very much for watching!

[keyboard clicking]

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