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Five years ago: Ricoh writes history with world's first CD-RW drive

Office equipment giant Ricoh said it will exhibit the world's first CD-ReWritable (CD-RW) drive at CeBIT 1997
Written by Arif Mohamed, Contributor

First published 10 March, 1997

Office equipment giant Ricoh said it will exhibit the world's first CD-ReWritable (CD-RW) drive at the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany this week.

The Japanese firm's six-speed read, two-speed write Ricoh MP 6200S CD-RW drive supports packet writing (writing whole files instead of individual tracks) and can write to a CD-RW disk up to seven times faster than a conventional floppy disk, according to the firm. In addition, the CD-RW disk can be rewritten over 1,000 times.

"We believe some of our competitors will also be showing CD-RW drives, but ours is the first to be announced, and the first to ship," said a spokeswoman for Ricoh.

The MP 6200S CD-RW drive will ship shortly after the CeBit show at a price not yet announced.

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