I ordered a CD through the mail. When it came, I realized that this CD can’t be more than 3" in diameter. Everything I use to listen to CDs is slot-loading, that is, if I’m using the proper terminology, there is a slot, and you push the CD into it, and the slot pulls it in, hopefully to spin. Is there any harm in inserting a smaller-than-average CD into a slot-loading drive, or are they solely designed to be used with “standard” (about 5 or 6 inches?) sized CDs?
Ha, good question! I never thought of that.
If I were you I wouldn’t try until you know for sure. I actually doubt it will work but I don’t know. I have one of those ickle cds. it’s the drivers disc for my wireless sd card.
Don’t do it. It’s liable to get jammed in there. If you still have the manual that came with your computer it may very well hold a disclaimer warning against this very situation.
I’ll see if I can find an example.
My CD tray is designed to hold 3 sizes of CDs, which you can tell by looking at the “holder”, the deepest inset is designed for business card CDs, there’s a miniCD sized circle encompassing that, and then there’s the normal sized circle for normal sized CDs. Take a look and see if yours isn’t designed that way - a lot of people never even notice that their trays are set up that way. If it doesn’t have that kind of setup, I would not suggest using the CD in your drive.
The manuals for all my car stereos have warned against putting mini CDs inside. The slot loader is only designed for standard CDs. If you try to play a mini CD, you’ll risk damaging the disc and the drive.
But that doesn’t mean your CD is worthless. Find a computer with a tray-loading CD burner, and copy your mini CD onto a full size CD-R. As TellMeI’mNotCrazy mentioned, nearly all tray loading drives are designed to work with mini CDs.
An adapter like this one will allow the use of 8cm discs in a slot-loading drive.
Just my two cents… YMMV and all that…
I’ve used the small CDs on desktop PCs as you’ve described before, with no problem. Most of them have had smaller inserts inside the larger tray shape to hold a smaller CD.
My car CD player accepts (and ejects) them just fine, also.
YMMV.
I solved the problem by having a friend import the tracks with his tray loading CD drive (with a groove for the smaller CDs) and AIMing me the songs he imported.
Get one of the adapters that Cleophus linked to. Before America as a whole rejected the 3" CD for audio purposes, they used to sell them at the register of your local music stores. Since I haven’t seen one in a music store in twelve years, I haven’t seen the adapters either. As others have mentioned, it should play fine in a “normal” CD-ROM drive, but not those %#*&! slot drives. Man, I hate those!
I have a PC here at the office that a moron former employee jammed a mini-cd in (slot drive) and the damn thing makes a horrible noise when booting up! (Trying to eject the stuck CD).
Of course, I suppose I should replace the drive by now, but that’s so far down my list it’s not funny.
Mini-CDs and, even worse, business-card CDs are evil, pure and simple.
That said, I’ve always liked the floppy disk form factor. I’m perfectly happy with CDs for software installations and the like, but I’d love a rewritable CD in a protective shell in the floppy disk size – when you go out to revive a dead PC, you just stick the boot disk and tools in your shirt pocket!
Sounds like a MiniDisc.
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- No, actually they can be quite handy for things. And if nothing else, it was high comedy when Apple brought out (one of) some new computer that featured the “nifty cool-looking” slot-loading DVD drive–and didn’t bother to say that if you inserted a mini-CD, that it was unejectable, and that the computer couldn’t be rebooted or opened up easily to get it out.
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- No, actually they can be quite handy for things. And if nothing else, it was high comedy when Apple brought out (one of) some new computer that featured the “nifty cool-looking” slot-loading DVD drive–and didn’t bother to say that if you inserted a mini-CD, that it was unejectable, and that the computer couldn’t be rebooted or opened up easily to get it out.
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- My only complaint is that I have not ever been able to find mini-CD-RW’s, just the write-once CD-R’s.
- It used to be that all car-audio CD players would not take the mini-discs either, but now a guy at work says that some can (as well as play MP3 cd’s, navigate directories of songs, etc.). One should assume they won’t until you see it in the owner’s manual however.
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Huh. I’ve had opposite problem; I haven’t been able to find the CD-Rs in quantities < 100.
I got a five pack of 8cm RW’s at Circuit City for like $6.
I use em (mostly) for carting around DamnSmallLinux, which is a full Linux distro with Blackbox that tips the scales at under 50MB. If I could find blank business card CDs, I’d use those instead.
I have a small collection of popular music mini-cds, which I just pulled from the shelf.
When the music industry introduced 3 " cds, I thought they were a terrific replacement for the traditional 45rpm ‘single’. For four or five bucks you would get four or five songs. Usually it was the hit single, with some additional songs which did not appear on the album.
Apparently, they never caught-on. Now you can purchase one song (+ its shorter version?) on a five inch cd for the same price. This doesn’t seem like progress to me.
These three inch cd-singles were packaged in paper. My small collection contains Bruce Springsteen, U2, R.E.M., The Traveling Wilburys, Johnny Cash, Tracy Chapman, and The Meat Puppets.
All released in 1988 or 1989.
I have a bunch of the smaller audio CDs that I picked up when I was in Japan. It seems they are still popular there for single releases. They typically have two or three songs on them and come in a rectangular case that can be conveniently folded into a small square.
Some slot loaders are meant to handle this type of CD. The player in my previous car could use them, but my current one cannot. So, if you still have access to the manuals for your CD drives, take a look in there, it should tell you if you can use them. (If they’re not mentioned, I’d stay on the safe side and assume it doesn’t work)
I have a Sony camera that uses the small CD for storage. Just pop it out of the camera and into the computer drive and there is your pictures. Sony CD cameras have been available for years,
I too own a few of the 3" CDS, mostly from Japan. Sometimes they come with an adapter, and my portable player will play them.
I think they’re cute, widdle baby CDS.