Extracting CDRs - Issues

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zaval80
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

Post by zaval80 »

I remember the time when my boss wanted to invest into, ahem, a "ZIP-drive" :mrgreen: of course, I prevented him from throwing money to the wind, and the latest word on the subject, a CD-Rec drive was duly bought.

The first results were awful, as I remember; it was almost useless for copying discs. I remember also how, in a company of company's geek, we've tried to compare the results achieved by different ripping software. That was slightly before the advent of EAC, and was a nightmare. Right then, I've had it down to the science. The procedure that was cheering me no end was the byte-by-byte comparison. Then I knew the digital wasn't rocket science. Suddenly, it was possible to compare things and to look into things.

I think about all my media from then must be alive, though I rarely check it now. The oldest ones must be 23 years now.
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

Post by fab4gear »

Doug wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 7:02 pm By crystalisation, do you mean that cloudy goo that forms on the playing surface? If so, it can be removed with a drop of Dawn, a microfiber cleaning cloth, and a little patience.

Get Back Journals 2 was noted for that, IIRC.
I have tried all those remedies, even the 'Vick' one & I even invested in a semi professional Media Disc skimmer / polisher, which works great on very badly scratched ' pressed' silvers but it did'nt fix any the those CD's with that Crystalisation problem, they looked better but still had the same faults.
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Lord Reith
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

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Did anyone else have an actual standalone cd recorder?

I was really miffed when I discovered it would not accept normal computer blanks. You had to buy special "audio" cdrs which literally were five or six times the price. The propaganda was that the extra money would go to artists. Like, how? Every artist in the world is going to get a share of my ten bucks? Why bother? I suspect 99% of it went to the record companies.

My joy knew no bounds when I found that the tray to the Philips recorder could easily be pulled out with your fingers. So all you had to do was put a blank "audio" cd in the recorder, let the machine recognise it and then go idle, and then pull the tray open and replace the disc with a cheaper computer disc, then push the tray shut and start recording!
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Track06
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

Post by Track06 »

My dad got a Philips one too, because he refused my offer to burn anything he wants me to, if he bought me a much cheaper CDR-drive for my PC instead. That device still is in the same place it was in 1999, but hasn't been used in ten or more years.
I think much of the addtional cost of the blanks went to your local copyright collective.
zaval80
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

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Lord Reith wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 10:56 am My joy knew no bounds when I found that the tray to the Philips recorder could easily be pulled out with your fingers. So all you had to do was put a blank "audio" cd in the recorder, let the machine recognise it and then go idle, and then pull the tray open and replace the disc with a cheaper computer disc, then push the tray shut and start recording!
Ah ha ha, that's a great story! The trial-and-error method to bypass the phoney system!

Computer drives usually had a small hole under the tray, so it'd be possible to insert something like an end of a straightened metal clip in order to get the tray pull out. I have no idea how it was with stand-alone recorders.
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

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zaval80 wrote: Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:30 am
Lord Reith wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 10:56 am My joy knew no bounds when I found that the tray to the Philips recorder could easily be pulled out with your fingers. So all you had to do was put a blank "audio" cd in the recorder, let the machine recognise it and then go idle, and then pull the tray open and replace the disc with a cheaper computer disc, then push the tray shut and start recording!
Ah ha ha, that's a great story! The trial-and-error method to bypass the phoney system!

Computer drives usually had a small hole under the tray, so it'd be possible to insert something like an end of a straightened metal clip in order to get the tray pull out. I have no idea how it was with stand-alone recorders.
Well usually if you try to pull the drawer open with your fingers it engages the eject mechanism, which would have ruined it. But by some weird fortuitous fluke the drawer on the Philips didn't have that, although I could probably have disabled it by snipping a wire inside.

I was able to use one "audio cd" a couple of hundred times to prime the recorder in this way before the disc packed up. Unfortunately by that time they had stopped making those cds, so I was left with an $1100 white elephant. I ended up throwing the wretched thing away. What a terrible waste of money.

And I was one of the idiots who invested in an expensive ZIP drive and the equally expensive zip discs. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Never spend a lot of money on technology! It lasts a couple of years and then is useless. I'm reminded of the very first "iPod" I ever saw, in the late 90s. It was a gigantic contraption the size of a dishwasher and held all your cd collection like a juke box. This was at the house of someone I knew and they were proudly showing it off to me as I thought quietly to myself "What a terrific waste of money!" You could program it with playlists and stuff like an iPod, but it was an utterly ridiculous thing that cost something like ten grand and weighed more than a fridge. A couple of years later the first iPod came out. Boy, I bet that family was kicking themselves repeatedly up the arse when that day came. :lol:
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

Post by Egg_Crisis »

I had some cdr's that'd been stored in plastic sleeves and I purposefully placed the discs in the sleeves with the underside facing the plastic bit - because I'd read something about someone having a cd get stuck to the plastic and having some of the microscopically thin top layer peel off. So years later I go to extract the contents of some of the discs and the underside has some rough/opaque areas. I was using a damp cloth to polish the roughened bits smooth which allowed me to extract the contents, but it was taking a few minutes to polish each disc... so after transferring many discs I realised that if I used methylated spirits the opaque parts wiped away in seconds! I wish I'd discovered it sooner!
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

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Egg_Crisis wrote: Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:06 am methylated spirits
:o
Only spit (& polish), nothing else!
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

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Lord Reith wrote: Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:03 am I'm reminded of the very first "iPod" I ever saw, in the late 90s. It was a gigantic contraption the size of a dishwasher and held all your cd collection like a juke box. This was at the house of someone I knew and they were proudly showing it off to me as I thought quietly to myself "What a terrific waste of money!" You could program it with playlists and stuff like an iPod, but it was an utterly ridiculous thing that cost something like ten grand and weighed more than a fridge. A couple of years later the first iPod came out. Boy, I bet that family was kicking themselves repeatedly up the arse when that day came. :lol:
Probably something with a "multi-disc changer"? :lol:
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Re: Extracting CDRs - Issues

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zaval80 wrote: Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:56 pm
Egg_Crisis wrote: Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:06 am methylated spirits
:o
Only spit (& polish), nothing else!
I was using spit & polish at first, before I discovered meths did a much faster and cleaner job. Didn't matter what it did to the cd's long term as I was binning them after making the transfer and backing them up on DVD's.
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