Red's Robot Repair & Refit

THE // KISS

So this is the Panasonic PRONOTE PD CF-62, it's a Pentium 133mhz running Windows 95, released in August 1996. Panasonic did this sort of trick more than once, they did a similar thing with an under-keyboard CD-ROM drive in the PD CF-41, from 1995.

This one is so fancy because that's not just a self-loading under-keyboard laptop CD-ROM drive, it's a HYBRID PD/CD-ROM self-loading under-keyboard laptop drive! It has to be this complex because it takes PD discs (which are the size of caddies) and caddyless CD-ROMs!

So what's PD discs?

They're an optical format by Panasonic, the Phase-change Dual (or Phase-change Disc). They're from 1996, store as much as CD, but are rewritable... much like the later CD-RWs which used basically the same technology, just in a slightly different format. Unlike CD-RWs (which you had to burn (usually), they acted like a hard drive, fully rewritable at any point. That's why the disc is hard-sectored, which you can see through the shutter gap. Those vertical lines indicate where sectors start and end.

So yeah, this laptop has a complex drive that can take both types of discs, and the whole thing folds under the keyboard. Fucking wild.

But the root reason, of course, is that they did this because it's a cool design, and they wanted to do that. Why did they think this was cool, why did they want to do this?

Pervert reasons.

x.

"Got my oil changed last week. They also replaced my coolant which feels so nice."

"oh nice.... how was it?"

"Running like 7°C lower than before... I almost forgot about that too, I was a month late for it"

"a month?" chuckles nervously "uh... yeah"

"Speaking of... When was your last checkup?"

"..........five years ago... when i had to renew my id"

(silence)

"I don't think that's healthy-"

"shut up! i'm fine!"

she crosses her arms and there's a loud creaking noise

"don't you dare say a wor-"

"I'm getting a reservation for you."