I love my design language appropriate PowerBook peripherals but one thing I haven't seen is a PowerBook grey external CD ROM drive. Where there ever any made? Would love pictures if you have one.
-
Hello MLAers! We've re-enabled auto-approval for accounts. If you are still waiting on account approval, please check this thread for more information.
Where there ever PowerBook themed external SCSI CD drives?
- Thread starter avadondragon
- Start date
PowerCD. I have one 
It's really great! It can function as a battery powered CD player (or via a mains adapter). It can also function as a PhotoCD player (because it has a composite video output).
en.wikipedia.org
It's really great! It can function as a battery powered CD player (or via a mains adapter). It can also function as a PhotoCD player (because it has a composite video output).
PowerCD - Wikipedia
PowerCD. I have one
Oh my. That is a thing of beauty. Thoroughly exceeds my expectations. I knew something like that had to exist.I think I saw one of those Panasonics when I was searching eBay for a drive that would look good with a PowerBook. It is definitely a good match. I think it is neat that they are both basically walkmans too.
Love the PowerCD. I wish I had one for my collection, but they tend to turn up on eBay for much higher prices than I want to pay, or they’re missing the dock (or both).
I picked up a Sony CD-ROM Discman a while back, which I think goes well with my Duo setup.
I picked up a Sony CD-ROM Discman a while back, which I think goes well with my Duo setup.
Wow an actual Diskman with SCSI?! What an awesome feature. It is so compact.
Yep, they had a number of models. Searching eBay for “sony prd” returns quite a few results. One thing you give up is that they use an external AA battery pack instead of having internal room for the batteries. Mine came with one, but I use it with a generic adjustable power supply from Amazon. Powered from the battery it pretty aggressively goes to sleep, but powered from the wall adapter it will stay awake even when idle.
The trick is finding one with the PowerBook SCSI cable. They offered it as a Mac model with the PowerBook cable, or as a PC model with a SCSI PCMCIA card and cable.
The trick is finding one with the PowerBook SCSI cable. They offered it as a Mac model with the PowerBook cable, or as a PC model with a SCSI PCMCIA card and cable.
I wish I could say I bought my PowerCD because I thought it would be an iconic Apple product in the future, but in reality I bought it in 1994 or 1995 because I wanted a CD ROM player for my LC II (Performa 400 really) and I didn't yet have an audio CD player (I did have a collection of CDs, which I copied onto tapes using friends' CD players). I don't think it was very popular at the time and the price had dropped, but I did think it looked good and I used it both as a standalone CD player and 1.5x CD ROM drive. I didn't know of any photo shops that did PhotoCDs, but it would have seemed like an awful faff to have to connect up a TV to look at a low-quality photo, when everyone just passed photos round the room ).
My PowerCD has come in handy more recently, because I bought a cheap PowerBook 1400/117 without a CD drive. Actually, I couldn't get it to work for ages until it occurred to me it conflicted with the standard CD ROM extension. By that point I'd switched over from the internal HD to an IDE to SD card (8GB) and added a whole bunch of 750MB partitions (using a disk image tool I wrote on a Raspberry PI, since Disk tools didn't seem to want to let me). I'd managed to get my PowerBook 1400 hooked up to my SCSI Zip 100 drive and precisely one disk had had a boot driver! Also another Zip disk had the PowerCD extension, which I then copied to the System 7.5.3 partition on my PowerBook 1400. Then I had the hassle with the conflicting drivers, but once I fixed that, I was then able to install my own, proper copy of Mac OS 8 on the second HD partition !
I then found a link to the free upgrade to British Mac OS 8.1 via the Wayback machine; upgraded to 8.1 and then reformatted all the subsequent partitions as HFS+. Mac OS 8.1 on the PowerBook 1400 seemed to run fine in 16MB of physical RAM (VM=24MB), but I later acquired another 16MB, so it's a pretty cosy setup. Mac OS 8.1 was definitely my favourite early PowerPC OS version!
I didn't know there were any other SCSI, portable CD ROMs, so the Sony CD ROM Discman is a revelation. I guess that functions as a standalone CD player too !
).My PowerCD has come in handy more recently, because I bought a cheap PowerBook 1400/117 without a CD drive. Actually, I couldn't get it to work for ages until it occurred to me it conflicted with the standard CD ROM extension. By that point I'd switched over from the internal HD to an IDE to SD card (8GB) and added a whole bunch of 750MB partitions (using a disk image tool I wrote on a Raspberry PI, since Disk tools didn't seem to want to let me). I'd managed to get my PowerBook 1400 hooked up to my SCSI Zip 100 drive and precisely one disk had had a boot driver! Also another Zip disk had the PowerCD extension, which I then copied to the System 7.5.3 partition on my PowerBook 1400. Then I had the hassle with the conflicting drivers, but once I fixed that, I was then able to install my own, proper copy of Mac OS 8 on the second HD partition
!I then found a link to the free upgrade to British Mac OS 8.1 via the Wayback machine; upgraded to 8.1 and then reformatted all the subsequent partitions as HFS+. Mac OS 8.1 on the PowerBook 1400 seemed to run fine in 16MB of physical RAM (VM=24MB), but I later acquired another 16MB, so it's a pretty cosy setup. Mac OS 8.1 was definitely my favourite early PowerPC OS version!
I didn't know there were any other SCSI, portable CD ROMs, so the Sony CD ROM Discman is a revelation. I guess that functions as a standalone CD player too
!It does indeed - headphone and line out jacks on the side, volume control, and front panel playback controls. I haven’t tried it, but it seems like there’s a good chance it’ll respond to standard Sony remote commands.I guess that functions as a standalone CD player too
Also - I forgot, it has a bay on the side for a removable, rechargeable battery. I might need to see if I can find one of those just to have.
I have a Sony PRD-650 and got a battery for that internal battery bay. It's a "LIP-12 rechargeable lithium ion battery", you can still buy new ones on Amazon (they were apparently used in MiniDisc players later on):
The Mac versions of these Sony drives I'm aware of are:
Sony PRD-250MC CD-ROM Discman Portable Player (4x speed)
Sony PRD-650MC CD-ROM Discman Portable Player (6x speed)
Manual PDF files attached.
Last edited:
Yeah, I think it is, at least I don't think it was a connector with a standardized pinout for SCSI use. Somewhat amusingly it is the same connector that is used for the PowerBook 2400c's external floppy drive (most definitely not SCSI).
It’s not a standard port, but I’m pretty sure it’s in the same family as the AAUI connector that Apple used for Ethernet on some machines. I think it’s a 26 pin MDR series connector, but I’m not sure. One of these days I want to buzz out my cable and see if I can figure out the connector and pin out for sure.
The PowerCD is such a cool looking product, I'd want one just to display it on a shelf somewhere... so nice.
This!
Thanks! I think I’d seen that at one point in time, and then promptly forgot.
Sorry to add to an old thread, but I have a Sony PRD-650 CD-ROM without the Mac SCSI cable. I've been thinking about building a cable for it, perhaps to a standard DB-25. I'm trying to figure out what the connector on the back of the CD-ROM is. I got a 26 pin MDR connector but it's larger than the connector on the back.
I think it's an "SDR" connector, closest I can find is a 3M 12326-3160-00 per this catalog. Interestingly, the provided Adaptec PCMCI cable for PC says Molex but no model no.
Anyone have one of these Mac cables (PRD-650MC) (that goes to a PowerBook SCSI HDI-30) can provide a pin out? I'm guessing the cable for the PRD-250MC is the same.
I think I found the actual Molex part for the cable connector side. Molex 52660-2611, 1.00mm (.039") Pitch, Shielded Plug, 52660 Dual Row.
Source: Molex 1995 Catalog, PDF page 943, catalog page Q49.
Unfortunately, I can't find a source for one so this may be unobtanium. This site has some photos of it, looks to be a crimp style connector.
Source: Molex 1995 Catalog, PDF page 943, catalog page Q49.
Unfortunately, I can't find a source for one so this may be unobtanium. This site has some photos of it, looks to be a crimp style connector.
I have a PRD-250 Discman and PowerBook SCSI cable, I'll try to tone it out sometime this week and will update the thread.
Similar threads
