Watch the World's Fastest CD-ROM Drive in Action

Roughly 20 years ago, generic optical drives flooded the market, promising incredible speeds they could never deliver. Those drives ended up destroyed in record time, made CDs explode from vibrations, or turned them into shurikens when we opened the tray. However, there was one that reached the remarkable 72x mark. I'm referring to the Kenwood True-X UCR-421, the fastest CD-ROM drive in the world.

I could probably find a couple of DVD burners if I spent a couple of hours. Both with SATA interface, of course, because the only thing left of IDE drives here is a pack of cables. Yes, I'm one of those people who have boxes and bags full of cables just "because I might need them later." What if I decide to build a retro computer? What if you decide to start a similar project? Technically, there are several alternatives to replace old hardware. Many enthusiasts have already replaced old pre-XP era hard drives with SD card or CompactFlash converters. But if you have original CD-ROM games and want to use them, you'll need a real and fast drive, especially with those multi-disc QuickTime-based titles. If you've ever wondered what the fastest CD-ROM drive in the world is, here it is:

Kenwood True-X: The Fastest CD-ROM Drive in the World

Once again, Clint from the Lazy Game Reviews channel demonstrated his spectacular ability to hunt retro hardware online and found a working example of the Kenwood True-X UCR-421. At first glance it doesn't seem like much, and the truth is that Kenwood released other drives under that series, but the difference is that the UCR-421 can read discs at 72x the original base speed (150 KB/s × 72 = 10.8 MB/s).

Some drives used software to create a secondary cache (i.e., a fake "accelerator"), but not the Kenwood. In fact, its transfers barely required between 2,700 and 5,100 RPM on the CD, and as expected, the secret was in the laser. Instead of keeping the beam intact, Kenwood incorporated a diffraction grating that split it into seven parts. These beams were corrected and focused with two additional lenses, then collected by a splitter and sent to the detector. A dedicated ASIC called Zen handled the heavy lifting, reducing the final load on the CPU.

Beyond the extraordinary reviews, the Kenwood True-X UCR-421 was not without flaws. User reports mentioned problems ripping audio CDs or reading CD-RW discs, noise and vibrations, and errors reading Full Motion Video from games like Diablo II. The last firmware available for the drive solves almost all of those issues (except for reading CD-RW discs). The Kenwood True-X was three times faster than a traditional 56x drive when installing Diablo II, reaching an average of 65x in Nero's benchmark, with a ceiling of 71.99x. Would you like to get one? I can only say "good luck." It took Clint eight years to find a working one...

Official site: