Replacing IDE HDD with optical drive on Performa 6320CD
- Thread starter carian
- Start date
It will be tricky. The hard disk is 3.5" wide, a CD drive is 5" wide.
You might be able to re-route the IDE cable over to the optical bay with an extension, but you'd have to remove the existing blade push connectors and possibly create a new back stop.
IDE was a barely just kinda compliant abomination in that series. It supported only a single HDD and I'd be very surprised if it's possible to interface with an Optical Drive.
at that point, might as well just use a zulu-compatible scsi emulator for the cdrom
i assume the OP wants a physically working cdrom though
I don’t think anyone has tried this, you will have to experiment. As has been mentioned, the implementation of IDE on these Macs is very primitive and possibly non-compliant in a number of ways.
Getting the cabling over to the 5.25” bay will be a big challenge, as has already been stated.
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Indeed, but just checked the length of the IDE cable. It can easily reach an optical sitting in front of the HDD bay as can the power cable. Drive may be upside down, but ready for testing with the CD inserted via power cable only hookup before IDE cable is installed.
If the Mac is turned upside down, the CD will be the right way up... Et voila.Indeed, but just checked the length of the IDE cable. It can easily reach an optical sitting in front of the HDD bay as can the power cable. Drive may be upside down, but ready for testing with the CD inserted via power cable only hookup before IDE cable is installed.
erm . . . the cooling fan exhausts out the lid.
Should be easy enough to re-route the exhaust. LOL
Or just space it off the surface? Nothing you couldn't fix with a book - the vents are near the rear of the case.
Thought about that, but a pithy comment is hard to resist. Don't remember if the cable's long enough to stretch that far, FDD offset and all. But a paperback of appropriate thickness under the Optical would work as well.
Don't remember if the cable's long enough to stretch that far, FDD offset and all. But a paperback of appropriate thickness under the Optical would work as well.
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I doubt you will ever get an Optical drive or any device other than a single IDE drive to be addressed on that cable. It's not a simple ROM limitation, much lower level in the hardware. It's an abomination in terms of a somewhat/kinda/sorta sub-standard implementation of the IDE spec. Apple again, go figure!
So it goes . . .
So it goes . . .
It does what was needed of it - it's more compatible with compact flash cards than the bought in chips in the beige and B&W G3s.
Despite all the fuss people make about it I've never had it not work with a disk I've tried.
More than that - I think it is IDE only, not ATA, whatever that means.
Edit : Apparently ATA is the bus standard, so this likely means Apple had a non-compliant design that did as much as they needed to work with their IDE disks, but not enough to be called "ATA".
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