- Additionally, older systems are completely void of the constant war against the system. At some point, systems felt like a professional tool to do stuff, now it’s more a feeling of using a rented consumer gadget you have to forcefully pressure into a deterministic no-nonsense-mode. As if these were never meant to be used productively.
Some of these are magnitudes more complex than tray loaders, failing left and right with more years going by. Some had several boards inside moving and shifting with the inserted caddies. I can only guess that this was hell to get right in the earlier days: the cartridge was moving, the loader mechanism was moving and the laser was, sometimes on a separate plane, moving, too.
I remember when, after the trays came up (these were considered just OK), slot loaders took a seat. Everyone I knew who used a caddy drive stared at these things in horror: Yeah, good idea. Let’s pat directly on the surface read by the laser. What could possibly go wrong?
Did not matter in the end. CD prices dropped like a stone and that was it. :-)