A tool for burning visible pictures on a compact disc surface (2022)

[Cockbrand]

Back in the day, there was a Yamaha burner with a feature called "DiscT@2". It could burn images and text onto the unused area of a CD-ROM. I just had to get it and did so, and I had a bit of fun with it.

[xattt]

It seemed especially badass when the model number was the CRW-F1, released in 2002.

It was also cool because the activity would blink purple (orange + blue) during writing. This set it apart when blue LEDs were all the rage.

[bayindirh]

I still have that particular Yamaha burner (CRW-F1). Besides DiscT@2, which I used to burn all types of useful information, it had really good burn quality. Given I used a good brand, none of the discs had rotted or lost data even after a decade.

[m-s-y]

Same. I had one of these in ‘98/‘99. The disc didn’t even go into a standard tray—-you had to use a caddy that completely enveloped the disc.

[Molitor5901]

I fondly remember LightScribe, that was a pretty awesome technology.

[gambiting]

I was going to say, I still have a 5 pack of Lightscribe DVDs unopened in a box specifically to save something "special" but obviously nothing has ever been special enough to warrant using them. And now that they aren't made anymore it would feel downright sacrilegious to use them, not to mention 4.7GB of capacity is just not enough for anything nowadays really.

[tomjuggler]

Still have a few of those knocking around. USB is just not the same

[ungawatkt]

I gave this a go about 3 years ago when the hackday project[1] first got published, it turns out choosing the parameters is _very_ disc dependent, since every disc is a little bit different (possibly even between lots of the same type, not published anywhere, and quite sensitive. I got it working for the CD-R's I got, but it took ~50 experiments to get ok parameters (the image was pretty good, but still wobbly in some areas of the disc).

That said, the end result is pretty cool, if hard to photograph.

[1] https://hackaday.io/project/186303-burning-pictures-on-a-com...

[axoltl]

It’s a slightly more involved project, but tmbinc managed to write arbitrary pictures to a DVD surface:

https://debugmo.de/2022/05/fjita-the-project-that-wasnt-mean...

[extraduder_ire]

Cool idea. Like a more accessible version of lightscribe. (if you use a dual-sided disc)

I assume this isn't possible with a DVD/bluray due to the much much smaller pits.

[whycome]

> I assume this isn't possible with a DVD/bluray due to the much much smaller pits.

Or, you know, higher resolution images.

[HPsquared]

I suppose these shapes could be made incredibly detailed. There must be some kind of application for that.

[isoprophlex]

Its basically a bespoke diffraction grating printer, indeed. So, you could probably print holographic images?

[eahm]

30+ years of computer and I had no idea you could do this. These are the kind of things I get excited about!

[londons_explore]

Congrats to the author - a few decades ago I attempted the same, with very little success (using data tracks, not audio, which might have been my mistake).

The challenge (as I saw it) was that the drive has the option to toggle the state of the laser every sector, effectively letting it invert all your data if it wants to. To have control of the laser state, you need to be able to do perfect predictions if the drive will toggle or not.

Any unpredicted bit leads to the laser state toggling and the image being ruined.

[lucianbr]

Assuming control of the decision to toggle, could that be used to draw something even while burning useful data? Of course you would have very low precision, but still. Maybe an outline or something.

[zapp42]

I love the Github username!

[thomassmith65]

I gather it's a reference to the pop singer Adriano Celentano?

[danjc]

It would be awesome if you could encode data using this technique

[hiatus]

Are not visible pictures encoded data?

[bestham]

Just burn a QR-code.

[ashoeafoot]

Can you encode holograms, similar to scratch holograms?

[grishka]

Oh wow, the readme to one of the mentioned projects is in KOI8. It's been decades since I last saw that encoding used.

[globular-toast]

If only this existed 15 years ago when I got rid of my burners.

[mystified5016]

It did! I remember playing with 'Disc T@2' when I was a kid. I had a lightscribe then too, so I put pictures on both sides

[al_borland]

After many years without an optical drive in my home, I bought an external one within the last year or so. It's one of those things that occasionally comes up, and is useful to have around, and I figured the longer I waited the more difficult it would become to find a decent one.

[sandreas]

I still use my bluray to rip audio CDs... Pretty oldschool but with navidrome and audiobookshelf it is a pretty solid workflow...

See https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/10/audio-cd-ripping-hardware/

[pavel_lishin]

I don't even remember if the CD/DVD drive I have in my desktop is a writer or not. I distinctly remember purchasing one about a decade ago, but I think I was looking for an external one.

Hell, I'm not even sure if it's plugged in at the moment, I may have unplugged it to plug in another hard drive...

[amelius]

Can it still hold data?

[_def]

I assume no https://github.com/arduinocelentano/cdimage/issues/16

[ziofill]

+1 for the GitHub user name :)

[meindnoch]

LightScribe reinvented?

[jccalhoun]

No. It is reinventing DiscT@2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiscT@2

[Animats]

Right. See [1]

It was really slow, but it did work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightScribe