CD-ROM Towers

Does anyone remember CD-ROM towers? They were these things used in businesses that allowed you to mount anywhere from six to hundreds of CD-ROMs and attach them to a server for LAN access. At one place I worked, we had an entire 42U rack filled with them. The run-of-the-mill versions allowed you to map a drive to the CD-ROM on the network, but the really good ones would let you map a drive to a root that listed each of the CD-ROMs as sub-folders.

What a strange half-measure transitional technology. While I recall wrestling with them (they were always SCSI and a hassle to manage) I don’t recall large groups ever really using them — some project identified a use for them, made IT implement it, and then no one but the stakeholder whose bright idea it was to obtain the device ever really used it.

They weren’t even particularly cool. What was cool were the DLT and LTO backup tape libraries with the bar code scanners and robotic arms that would swap tapes for you. That was awesome. That was science fiction.

And even today they’re going away. Who needs things with motors in their data centers? And who wants any technology that involves swapping media in a hurry? An appalling concept by today’s standards.