I just occurred to me that I never blogged about the PowerCD that I purchased for $100 last July. I wonder how that happened?

Anyway, here goes....





The PowerCD was released in 1993 for $499. Pretty pricey for a CD player, but then again, not only is it the coolest CD player ever, but it also doubles as a CD-ROM drive. The AppleCD 300 was $599 at the time, so the PowerCD was really the better buy. You could also take this little guy on the go as a portable CD player. Removing the side panel reveals a battery compartment.



On the other side you’ll find a headphone jack, volume control, and audio out port.



You can also detach the main unit from the base, although I don’t know what function that would serve seeing as power comes from the base.



The black connector on the back is a video/audio port. You can use it to connect the PowerCD to your TV and play picture CDs, and control the whole thing with the remote.





The button on the top left is the power button. Pressing the button on the top/middle opens the tray.



Once the tray is open, the natural tendency is to want to place the CD right on the center spindle like other portables, but the CD actually drops into the front of the door.



I located the PowerCD Setup disk image on Apple’s support page and wrote it to an 800K floppy.



I then ran the installer.



I connected the PowerCD to my Mac SE by chaining it to my SCSI Zip drive. I set the SCSI ID to 3 so there’s no conflicts with my other devices. I popped in my System 7.5 CD to try it out. The PowerCD automatically detected that a data CD is in the tray...



...and mounted the CD on the desktop. It works.



I hooked up my AppleDesign speakers and tried some music. To no surprise, that works just like you’d expect.



Apple also put out a black version of the AppleDesign Speakers to match the PowerCD and the PowerBook.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a pair!