The Strange But Amazing Pioneer MPC-GX1 & CLD-PC10

 

A Pioneer branded Macintosh with attached Laserdisc player.

     Nothing excites me more than strange and almost useless tech from the 80's and 90's, especially vintage Macintosh stuff, and defunct forms of media. I'm totally infatuated by the Pioneer Laser Active, a Laserdisc player with plug in modules to play LD based Sega Mega Drive games, and PC/TG16 games exclusive to the system. Super rare today, such oddities rarely come up on ebay, especially the games. Imagine a Laserdisc player that utilized the media like a giant sega CD, and no one knew about it. Even more insane and rare, was a PAC cartridge for the Laser Active that allowed you to interface with Macintosh computers via serial port, and give the ability to write software to it using the included program editor. Well do you know what is even MORE rare and crazy? A dedicated Laserdisc Macintosh addon and branded PC.

No one asked for this, but we want this. 

     The MPC-GX1 is a licensed Japanese Macintosh clone from the 90's, using the PowerPC 601 processor, popular at the time. Large powered speakers and a subwoofer were added to the case, which was a very unusual option for the time. One feature however was much more crazy than the rest; the ability to connect to a pioneer Laserdisc player, the CLD-PC10. Several programs were made for this crazy combination of technology, all education and Kiosk based. The Computer history museum made a 2.5 hour video on The Visual Almanac, and it explains how the PC controlled the player, and it how to worked in depth. Someone recently setup a collection of this technology for display at the Vintage Computer Festival East, 2025- where LGR stopped by and was given a quick demo.

     Essentially- It's a giant Apple/Bandai Pippin. The PC controlled the LD player much like you could control a DVD player today. You could chapter through the disc, record the screen if you had certain upgrades, and also build hypercard stacks that could control the tracks on the player. The MPC could also be outfitted with an MO (Magneto Optical) drive, another rare and expensive, senseless upgrade. This combined with some other needless upgrades (Full TV Tuner card and upgraded Video) spawned the MPC-LX200, another MPC series Apple clone with a Power PC 603e on a daughter card, running at a reasonable clock speed of 100mhz, so it's somehow better and aimed at the prosumer market.