Rev up your CD-ROM - Diamond Multimedia System's Diamond 12X Multimedia Kit CD-ROM upgrade kit - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, May, 1997 by Erik Sherman

Diamond 12x Multimedia Kit

RATING: ***

After checking out prices in hardware catalogs and listening to your old double-speed CD-ROM grunt and groan while installing that new office suite, the time is right for a faster CD-ROM drive. But do you think installing it yourself will be a headache? Knowing that CD-ROM drives can be one of the most problematic pieces of hardware to set up, we tried our hand at installing Diamond Multimedia's new 12x Multimedia Kit.

We installed the full upgrade kit including CD-ROM drive, sound card, and speakers into a 150MHz-equivalent Cyrix-based computer running Windows 95. The hardware installation required us to open the computer, find an empty 16-bit ISA card slot, and insert the sound card. Learn from our experience and remember to push the card as far into the slot as possible, otherwise it may seem defective. A packet of screws for fastening the CD to the 5.25-inch drive bay is a nice touch. Diamond is also generous with the data and audio cables: They reached from the drive to the sound card with length to spare. The entire physical installation took under an hour.

The drivers that came with our system's old Mitsumi 2x CD-ROM drive worked fine with the new 12x, eliminating that portion of the software installation. Windows 95 immediately recognized the SoundBlaster-equivalent plug~ and-play sound card, and the software installation continued without a hitch.

When CD drives go above quad-speed. they stop giving an exact multiple of a single speed's data transfer capacity. In other words, a 12x speed doesn't transfer data three times faster than a quad-speed, although the Diamond box Suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, the difference in speed was very impressive. For our performance tests, we opened 2MB stock photos and ran multimedia from Microsoft Bookshelf. It took only a second or two longer to open the CD-based photos than it took to open the same files copied to our computer's hard disk.

The upgrade kit ships with a number of multimedia educational and entertainment titles, such as Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, and more. If you're a graphic artist handling large files or if you often run multimedia or reference CDs, this easy upgrade could be worth your while.

Diamond 12x Multimedia Kit

Manufacturer: Diamond Multimedia, 408-3257000, 800-468-5846

Est. Street Price: $35O

Requirements: Windows 3.1 or higher, 486 PC or higher, 8MB of RAM, 3.5-inch floppy, 40MB of hard-disk space for bundled software, VGA or SVGA video card, available 16-bit ISA slot for sound card, available 5.25-inch drive bay for CD