In the late 1990s most small laptops, like the Toshiba Libretto, had no CD-ROM drive at all. Panasonic’s answer was this portable 8x CD-ROM drive that connects to a laptop through a PCMCIA card. It could also play audio CDs on its own like a Discman, with its own display, play buttons and headphone jack.
It runs on batteries or an adapter, and folds into a slim clamshell case barely larger than a CD.