https://hackaday.com/2022/07/11/burn-pictures-on-a-cd-r-no-special-drive-needed/
When we routinely carry devices holding tens or hundreds of gigabytes of data, it's sometimes a shock to remember that there was once a time when 650 MB on a CD was a very big deal indeed. These now archaic storage media came first as silver pre-recorded CD-ROMs, then later as recordable CD-Rs. Most people eventually owned CD writer drives, and some fancy ones came with the feature of etching pictures in the unused portions of the disc.
Haven't got a fancy drive and desire an etched CD-R? No worries, [arduinocelentano] has a solution, in software which writes a disk image for a standard CD writer whose data makes the visible image on the disc.
[Ed: I didn't quite grasp what this was about until clicking through to the project page. Very cool way to be artistic, assuming you still have a CD drive and CD-R disks available. --hubie]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday July 17 2022, @06:51AM (9 children)
or special disks [wikipedia.org] needed indeed. But I will point out that LightScribe disks could actually contain data. And LightScribe also allowed you to use normal CDRs and sacrifice some of the data surface to burn images.
Sooo... the old is new again.
Or rather it would be if CDRs were still a thing. Just wait until you see my dick-pics-on-a-thumbdrive hack!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 17 2022, @07:44AM (7 children)
Offtopic? It couldn't have been more on topic Aren't moderators supposed to read the posts they moderate?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 17 2022, @07:53AM (6 children)
Sometimes they just read the name of the account that posted it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Sunday July 17 2022, @07:56AM
SometimesOften they just read the name of the account that posted it. - FTFY(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 17 2022, @08:03AM (4 children)
How does that one result in offtopic? The OP isn't a known troll.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday July 17 2022, @08:05AM
Don't worry, the community (including you I imagine) is correcting it. The system is working as it should.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by acid andy on Sunday July 17 2022, @11:06AM (2 children)
He seems to have at least one nemesis. No idea if it's political or personal. Would be nice if they had the balls to join the discussion rather than downmodding from the shadows.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 5, Funny) by turgid on Sunday July 17 2022, @11:52AM (1 child)
It's them pesky Duke boys, ain't it?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 17 2022, @02:14PM
Yeah, David Duke (for anyone that doesn't know -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke [wikipedia.org] )
And yes, I did get the joke, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPHnfcg6sPA [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Thursday July 21 2022, @12:44PM
lightscribe CDs worked differently than LS DVDs? I just used LS dvds, and they burned images on the top side, so had no effect on on the size or format of the data side.
(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Sunday July 17 2022, @08:06AM (6 children)
CDs are 1970s technology. They were very advanced. In those days, a big computer had a megabyte of memory. Home (personal) computers were just coming out with a few kilobytes of memory, 8-bit CPUs that ran at 1-4MHz and often used analogue audio cassette tapes for storage. Very expensive ones had 8" or 5.25" floppy disks that could hold a couple of hundred kilobytes of data.
Audio CDs held 16-bit stereo PCM 44.1kHz audio that needed 16-bit DSPs to process. The data was stored using Reed-Solomon encoding to preserve integrity, protecting against scratches on the plastic surface of the disk. CD players were very expensive when they first came out. They were real status symbols.
Some time in the 80s 1.44MB 3.25" floppy disks came out (and IBM eventually made a 2.88MB standard which never caught on). Before CD-Rs were invented there were magneto-optical disks, about the same size as CDs, which could store 250MB. I believe the NeXT workstation used them.
There were also some technologies which could put tens of megabytes on a 5.25" floppy disk in the 80s. I think the drives were quite expensive.
When CD-Rs came out, they were a game changer. The media were dirt cheap (pennies) and you didn't need to care about being able to re-use them. You could backup large amounts of data that would previously have required tens of floppy disks very quickly, and put the disk away somewhere safe. Magnetic media like floppy disks (and Zip disks) were obviously susceptible to magnetic fields (from speakers and monitors) and also to dust and fingerprints. The drive heads used to give trouble too.
I've still got some CD-R backups from 20 years ago. I must try them to see if they're still readable.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday July 17 2022, @08:10AM (2 children)
80s.
Yeah, you're definitely thinking 80s.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday July 17 2022, @08:39AM
I thought the R&D for CDs started in the 70s? The first commercial players hit the market in the 80s. There were 8-bit personal (micro) computers with 8080 and Z80 CPUs (2MHz) in the late 70s that ran CP/M.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Sunday July 17 2022, @08:43AM
Found a link: The CD was unveiled to the world in March 1979, and the first compact disc was produced in a factory in Germany after years of development by Philips and Sony. [discmakers.co.uk].
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by owl on Sunday July 17 2022, @01:49PM (2 children)
When I bought my first CD-R drive, I distinctly remember paying about a dollar (US) each for the first blanks I purchased. They were not pennies each until some number of years (and competition from every maker of CD-R blanks) drove the price down.
A quick google search turned up this page from a May 1998 Popular Science magazine from google books [google.com] which contains this quote:
So according to that, the blanks where still $1 to $2 (US) in early 1998 when this article was written -- which matches my recollection.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday July 17 2022, @02:29PM
So $1.00 is about 60p?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday July 17 2022, @11:27PM
In the mid to late 90's we were using them for job storage. High quality (Kodak Gold) were about $5AU each.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday July 17 2022, @11:49AM (1 child)
I wonder if it could be made to work on writeable DVDs or Blu-rays? If not I suppose you could put a CD-R in one of those drives and it will work.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by owl on Sunday July 17 2022, @01:51PM
My guess would be yes, but that you'd need a different algorithm generating a different data pattern specific to DVD-R's or Blu-Rays.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Sunday July 17 2022, @12:51PM
I'll save you some time from that horrible impossible-to-navigate website:
The software is here:
https://github.com/arduinocelentano/cdimage [github.com]
It's from 2008. The guy had problems making it work on most drives, so abandoned it and then just threw it up there recently. It might work, it might not, but it's nothing new.
Everything else on those linked pages is either REALLY DUMB screenshot instructions on how to press "Load Image" and point it at your desired image, or endless links to the same pages with no real useful information, downloads or code.
Save yourself the effort, and deny them the clicks, and just look at the above and see if you can get it working.