The design is nearly identical to what one would get if one simply literally (almost) digitized a vinyl record. A single long spiral of data on a disk. The most significant shift is that vinyl records read from outside in, while audio CD's read from inside out. Even the method of manufacture is essentially a clone (audio CD's are "pressed" just like vinyl records are "pressed", just in different pressing machinery).
> built with technology from the late 1970s. It had to handle data rates that were incomprehensibly massive for the time, so only the most insanely basic error handling was feasible.
Yes, the limits of late 1970's technology had a huge impact on the overall design, but at the same time the design also took advantage of the fact that audio when being played back in real time is reasonably tolerant of a small level of error resulting from the read-off of the disk. Most listeners would never hear the random errors because they either are below the noise floor of the amplifier tech. at the time, or because the resulting analog wave was close enough to not be noticeably different.