History (1989): First Portable CD-ROM Drive From NEC

The NEC CDR-35 is the first portable CD-ROM drive.

From the outside, it looks a lot like a discman for audio compact disks.

It can indifferently read 12cm (540MB) and 8cm (180MB) disks.

The device measures 149(W) x 63(H) x 226(D)mm and weighs 0.95kg without battery.

It also can be used as an audio disk player.

It is less performing than other CD-ROM drives with a 1.5s average access time (maximum 3s) and a 150KB/s transfer rate.

In France, it costs FF4,900 a piece including battery and SCSI cable

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer storage Newsletter on issue ≠23, published on December 1989.