Huge Half-Life discovery found from a decades-old CD sitting in a storage unit

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Huge Half-Life discovery found from a decades-old CD sitting in a storage unit
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I haven't thought about burning CDs in a long time, man that takes me back. Remember Nero Burning ROM?

I think the etymology of the term is that when you're writing data onto a disk you're shooting a laser onto it to alter the chemistry and change its color, for which "burning" the data into it makes sense.

It wasn't the colour, you would burn little bubbles into the disk. The bubbles would deflect a laser and flat parts would not. This would give the 0 or 1 bits.

There were CD- and CD+ versions. I don't know which is which but one would create a divot, and the other would create a bubble. Either way the laser is diverted away from the sensor.

Ah, that's what it was! I always thought it was just a different color for 0 and 1, today I learned! That makes more sense when I think about it.

CD - red laser

BlueRay - blue laser.. shorter wavelength --> more data on same size disk

and inbetween there was DL - dual layer
light scribe - could etch a picture on the top of the cd
and RW - rewriteable CDs

(CD is short for compact disc)

CDs like laserdiscs before them are read with an infrared laser.

DVDs use a red laser, and Blu-ray does indeed use a blue-violet laser. The smaller wavelengths, plus the ability to do multiple layers, are indeed how they cram more data more densely onto a disc of nearly identical size.

light scribe

I remember having one, but I never actually etched a picture onto the CD, it never seemed worth doing.