Topic summary
CD-ROMs
Extracted from the Wikipedia article CD-ROM.
History
CD-ROMs began being used in home video game consoles starting with the PC Engine CD-ROM (TurboGrafx-CD) in 1988, while CD-ROM drives had also become available for home computers by the end of the 1980s. In 1990, Data East demonstrated an arcade system board that supported CD-ROMs, similar to 1980s LaserDisc video games but with digital data, allowing more flexibility than older LaserDisc games. By early 1990, about 300,000 CD-ROM drives were sold in Japan, while 125,000 CD-ROM discs were being produced monthly in the United States. Some computers that were marketed in the 1990s were called "multimedia" computers because they incorporated a CD-ROM drive, which allowed for the delivery of several hundred megabytes of video, picture, and audio data. The first laptop to have an integrated CD-ROM drive as an option was 1993's CF-V21P by Panasonic; however, the drive only supported mini CDs up to 3.5 inches in diameter. The first notebook to support standard 4.7-inch-diameter discs was IBM's ThinkPad 755CD in 1994.