CD drive for ADAM?

[SoulBlazer]

I just happened to be reading some articles on the Old Computer site tonight and when I got to this one about the Adam:

 

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=57

 

There's a mention in the last line about a possible CD drive:

 

"Greg Bowman reports that he got an external CD drive for his Adam from his uncle who was then Vice President of Coleco. He notices that this CD drive was designed especially for the Adam. If anyone has more information about this CD drive, don't hesitate to mail us."

 

Was such a thing planned or exist in protoype from, or is the guy making up a story?

[Pixelboy]

I just happened to be reading some articles on the Old Computer site tonight and when I got to this one about the Adam:

 

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=57

 

There's a mention in the last line about a possible CD drive:

 

"Greg Bowman reports that he got an external CD drive for his Adam from his uncle who was then Vice President of Coleco. He notices that this CD drive was designed especially for the Adam. If anyone has more information about this CD drive, don't hesitate to mail us."

 

Was such a thing planned or exist in protoype from, or is the guy making up a story?

Perhaps he mixed up the terms "CD drive" with "hard drive". There have been external IDE hard drive made for the Adam...

[NIAD]

I just happened to be reading some articles on the Old Computer site tonight and when I got to this one about the Adam:

 

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=57

 

There's a mention in the last line about a possible CD drive:

 

"Greg Bowman reports that he got an external CD drive for his Adam from his uncle who was then Vice President of Coleco. He notices that this CD drive was designed especially for the Adam. If anyone has more information about this CD drive, don't hesitate to mail us."

 

Was such a thing planned or exist in protoype from, or is the guy making up a story?

It quite possible what he had was a prototype of the CED Module that Coleco was working on after the wafer tape Super Game Module was given the AX... it's hard to say for sure especially since CD drives did not make their way to other systems until a number of years later.

 

There also was a ADAM Hard Drive in development by MPI Technologies (the maker of the ADAM 5 1/4" Floppy Disk Drive) that was said to be working and a number of Honeywell Service Centers supposedly had them. The other item of information that was discovered by someone (sorry, the name escapes me) was that the next generation ADAM was already in development by an outside company and it was called "Goliath". Once everything went south for Coleco, this unknown company supposedly continued development and it was eventually released in Europe under a different name.

[fiddlepaddle]

I have no actual knowledge of a CD drive, but applying a rationality check:

 

CD (music) players were very expensive ($1000 plus) in 1982 (in the US, at least). Around 1983, the bottom of the line were $250 to $300, and very heavy (maybe 5 pounds or more), and they only played music CDs. CD Roms became prevalent quite a bit later. I suppose it's possible there was a prototype of a CD music player attachment, maybe to hold software ROMs encoded as an analogue signal.

 

I doubt if there was any CD ROM (read-only) drive produced while the Adam was still being manufactured, and it's extremely unlikely any CD burner could even be considered until well into the 1990s.