My first CD-ROM drive cost $500. You could only get one with a SCSI interface at the time.
Yes. It needed a special card. My CD/Sound system was $300 for my 486/120.
I remember that too, and when they began coming down in price, at about $300, I remember when SCO came out with a new distribution of Unix, available on floppy disk, ct-tape, or cd-dom, and they priced the CD distribution about $300 less than the other 2.
Can you believe that drives that will burn BD-100 (100GB) are now running under $100?
Mark