The Secret History of ATAPI
owl writes:
https://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-secret-history-of-atapi/
The other day I asked myself a seemingly trivial question: What was the first ATAPI CD-ROM drive and when was it available? Given that ATAPI was a major technology which instantly obsoleted all proprietary CD-ROM interfaces and made SCSI much less desirable, one might expect that there would have been some press releases touting the advantages of the new technology, articles describing the whys and wherefores, but... nope. There is nothing.
In 1993, CD-ROM drives used either SCSI or one of several proprietary interfaces, the major amongst those being Matsushita/Panasonic, Mitsumi, Philips, and Sony. In 1995, the proprietary interfaces were effectively gone and most new CD-ROM drives used the ATAPI interface. Something clearly happened in 1994, but exactly what, when, and how-that's something of a mystery.
[Ed. note: As one who was around when this happened, I found it to be a detailed and fascinating read! Unfortunately, it was years later when I could afford my first CD-ROM. Who else here has experience from those early days? --martyb]
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