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by whoopdedo 1771 days ago
Wing Commander 2 is responsible for putting the most SoundBlasters into pre-Win95 computers. And it wasn't just for the sound capabilities. The first generation of SB cards included a CD-ROM interface. Prior to ATAPI there was no standard way to put an optical drive in a PC. SoundBlaster put the sound and CD-ROM interface on one card it saved you having to buy extra hardware, and encouraged developers to use discs for distributing their software.

Eventually IDE/ATAPI drives became the norm, and I believe the SB16 dropped the proprietary CD-ROM.

1 comments

My original (8-bit) Sound Blaster did not have a CD-ROM controller, but my first SB16 did.