TurboDuo Intelligent Link

[bt]

As many of you know, back in 1993, TTI revealed the TurboDuo Intelligent Link -- this was a device that plugged into your Turbo Duo card slot, and allowed the CD drive to be used as a SCSI CD drive on a PC or Mac.  5 prototypes were developed before the project was scrapped.  Here are a few images of one of those prototypes.




As far as I know, no PC driver was ever developed, the included red disk was for a Mac (System 7) driver.

[vestcoat]

Wow. That's pretty slick. The picture I remember from BITD had a bunch of loose wires and an awkward card input.

Also nice to see you posting!

[BigT]

Dude, that's awesome.  Haven't seen such clear pics of one of these before.

It would be interesting to hook this up to a Quadra or an early PowerMac running MacOS 7.5.5 to see if this actually works    It even has an ID selector on the side... old SCSI memories (managing IDs and termination...)

[DragonmasterDan]

I recall the episode of Computer Chronicles where Johnathan Trendstetter demo'ed this.

[Necromancer]

Heh, too cool; thanks for sharing.  Where'd ya ever get this thing and have you gotten it to work?

P.S. - Is that a giant perforated, red leather, ritz cracker?   

[TheOldMan]

As far as I know, no PC driver was ever developed...

Not sure you would need drivers for the pc for that. If it works like a regular scsi-cd rom, the host board in the pc should run it fine. You would need drivers for the host board, though.

<j/k> Send it to me, and I'll check it out

[esteban]

bt!!! Those pics are AWESOME. Thank you for sharing. I pray that the floppy works!

For folks who are interested, here's some of the stuff I have about the Intelligent Link...

Computer Chronicles (PBS) (screenshots of prototype in action! I did the best I could to get clean shots, but...):


















Intelligent Link was actually featured for sale in an old Electronics Boutique Catalog (December 1993) for only $129.99:


(Click for short article on catalog)


(Click for FULL PAGE)




TurboForce #2 (September 1992)





DuoWorld #3 (Nov / Dec 1993) (Falsely proclaiming that the IntelligentLink has been released!!!)





TurboForce #3 (January 1993)

[DarkKobold]

Were CD-ROM drives that expensive, that you'd want to pay $120 to hook a Turbo CD drive to your computer? These seems like the ultimate in ridiculous and unnecessary technology.

Granted, I don't really have an idea of the price of a standard CD-ROM  drive in 1993, but I have to imagine it was less than a TurboCD drive + this cable...

[Sadler]

Very cool! Thanks for sharing! I remember reading about this in the early 90's, and I wanted one. Bear in mind, I was the guy running Doom in a postage stamp sized view port on a 386, so my family wasn't exactly cutting edge on hardware.

esteban, do you have a link to the video those screen grabs were from?

[esteban]

Were CD-ROM drives that expensive, that you'd want to pay $120 to hook a Turbo CD drive to your computer? These seems like the ultimate in ridiculous and unnecessary technology.

Granted, I don't really have an idea of the price of a standard CD-ROM  drive in 1993, but I have to imagine it was less than a TurboCD drive + this cable...

CD-ROM drives were totally expensive back then. And some of them required a special "CD Caddy" (case). Lose (or break) the case and you couldn't use your CD-ROM drive until you got another CD caddy.

CD-ROM was not mainstream yet (it would take some time before most folks had it), but the CD-ROM "multi-media" software was being pushed hard and we were all drooling over it!!!!

I can't speak for the rich folks, but in 1992/1993, I was buying my software on floppies (lots of floppies!)

esteban, do you have a link to the video those screen games were from?

archive.org should have it! I downloaded the video years ago. They have an episode on TurboExpress, too. Maybe a third that deals with Genesis and TG-16 (new 16-bit systems) as well. That makes...three total shows? I have to re-watch them myself. It's been 6-7 years.

[vestcoat]

Great stuff, Esteban. You are now the official Turbo Sage Prince.

[ccovell]

All I thought about then and now is how easily the HuCard portion could snap in half, suspended in the air with that lump & cable hanging off it...

[ProfessorProfessorson]

This was that thing Smartworks put together/designed for TTi/Nec. You can blame it as to why TZD couldn't sell any systems outside of a trade in offer for a long time there, due to a agreement put in place allowing Smartworks to sell through their stock of hardware first. To pay them off for the work done they gave them a ton of systems to sell. This was already discussed years back here. My first few Turbo Cd systems came from SmartWorks. Back then (94-95) they were selling Turbo Cd systems for $50, and TG-16 decks for $25 or so. It was kinda funny too because I remember Smartworks simply shipped the systems using only the retail box, no extra packing. Kinda crappy of them in retrospect.

[SignOfZeta]

The screen shots from that video are pretty amazing. I had no idea that Steve Jackson and Al Gore were doing promo for TTi.

As for the finiacial viability of the thing, I don't recall what CDROMs cost back then because I couldn't afford one, even though I had the Duo, the most expensive game system.

I knew a guy with a CDROM version of Manhole in...I want to say 1988, the drive was about a grand then, I think.

Consider all those PC98x and x68k games on PCE. Advanced VG, Ys, whatever, they were almost always ported from floppy versions which is partially why the PCE versions were more lavish with anime cinemas, extra characters, etc.

I think the first version of Windows to sell on CDROM was Windows 95, and even then not at first, IIRC. CDROM wasn't a format full of killer apps at the time, but 1992 was very close to the transition. I think those Perfoma Macs with CDROMs in them were...what, 1993? So it was getting there.

[Necromancer]

By 1992 prices for CD-ROM drives had dropped to under $300 and were falling fast, which is no doubt why this project was canceled.  By the time this thing made it to market, a stand alone drive would've been cheaper than a Duo, maybe even as cheap as the cost of just the adapter and scsi card (for PC users).

P.S. - 3.1 was the first Windows to be available on CD, and 95 definitely launched on CD - including lots of silly extras, like music videos, movie trailers, and games.