Helium-neon lasers

[japlytic]

Some of you may know that the early LaserDisc players and laser printers used helium-neon laser tubes, which have been replaced by strong semiconductor lasers which are more compact and efficient.

With this in mind, I became curious about whether early CD players, CD-ROM readers and even CD recorders, along with other optical recording readers/writers (other than LaserDisc players) ever used helium-neon lasers - did any of these devices use such lasers?

[stj]

Re: Helium-neon lasers

unlikely - have you seen the size of the tube?
i'v got a couple.

[kc8adu]

Re: Helium-neon lasers

i dont recall cd devices using them.
i still have some including some compact ones with 12v supplies.
these would be too big to fit a cd drive.

[redwire]

Re: Helium-neon lasers

I have a 1mW HeNe laser tube, it is about 10" long and 1" O.D from a grocery scanner bar-code applications 1.4kV at 4.5mA power. Spectra-Physics 088.
You'd need precision movable mirrors to move the beam across a CD/LD which is not cheap at all. And they are just plain huge.
Amazing to see the same brightness but fatter beam in a $0.99 laser pointer.