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Bootable 50pin SCSI CDRW Drive

macuserman

Well-known member
I'm wondering if anyone knows which if any SCSI CDRW drives were bootable? I know there weren't a lot of options in general but if possible I'd like to find one.
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
I'm wondering if anyone knows which if any SCSI CDRW drives were bootable? I know there weren't a lot of options in general but if possible I'd like to find one.

I think you can burn a bootable CD on an old Mac CDRW drive (like a Yamaha) using the Toast CD extension for that drive. I haven’t done it in 25 years but I seem to recall doing this. YMMV
 

macuserman

Well-known member
I think you can burn a bootable CD on an old Mac CDRW drive (like a Yamaha) using the Toast CD extension for that drive. I haven’t done it in 25 years but I seem to recall doing this. YMMV
The systems I want to put it in only have room for one optical drive, so I'm more concerned about it being both bootable as in I can put a system CD in it and boot off it as well as being a CD burner.
 

lisa2

Well-known member
I had a Plexor 12X SCSI CDRW drive in my PowerMacintosh 7200 and it was bootable. I still have this drive, now in a UMAX S900 clone and bootable there also.
 

lisa2

Well-known member
On the face of the drive it is labeled: "PleXWriter 12/4/32"
SCSI probe shows it as a "PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W124TS Ver. 1.04"

12X CD-R
4X CD-RW
32X CD-ROM

I definitely boots, I tried it tonight on the UMAX S900 and booted the recovery CD.

Rick
 

Byrd

Well-known member
Plextor is probably the choice, I've had limited success with Sony and NEC branded CD-RW drives (a combination of odd behaviour like not booting but mounting CDs OK when the OS loads, or vice versa)
 

macuserman

Well-known member
I guess I’m on the lookout for a plextor unit then. The ones I have are both Yamaha and if I recall did not boot for sure.
9D880668-0923-43E9-948D-B5D27D78E324.jpeg
 

lisa2

Well-known member
When searching for a PlexWriter, note that the "S" ( PX-W124TS ) in the model number is important, I think "S" denotes SCSI.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
When searching for a PlexWriter, note that the "S" ( PX-W124TS ) in the model number is important, I think "S" denotes SCSI.
Good to know, what about PX-W124TSi I found one that has an i at the end but I'm not sure what that would indicate.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
Welp I threw an offer of $40 bucks and it was accepted on this very very dirty and questionable unit all the others online are selling for insane money. We'll see if it works and if it's bootable. https://www.ebay.com/itm/224434005740 Hopefully it's not a lemon.
Ooof that's ugly the more I look at it lol, well I didn't really think he would accept my offer it was so far under what he was asking. Guess we'll see might have to scrub it and try my hand at retrobrite for the first time on that faceplate yuck yuck.
 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
Dish soap and hot water will clean most of that up.

Not snagging a bunch of NOS Plextor SCSI CD drives when they were being dumped was something I still regret.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
Dish soap and hot water will clean most of that up.

Not snagging a bunch of NOS Plextor SCSI CD drives when they were being dumped was something I still regret.
Yeah we'll see I plan to put this in one of my very special machines so looks are important as well as functionality.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
We’ll it came today! It did scrub up somewhat but it’s still pretty yellow and dirty looking. Although it is very quiet and did boot off my install disc without any issues. Haven’t tried to burn anything yet but so far I’m pleased I think a lot of that will be covered up by my powermac bezel and it won’t look to awful. I'm actually wondering if the eject button is going to line up now, guess I'll have to get it all buttoned back up and try it.
6456F9D0-51FB-4FBF-8A43-6F6376A50A4A.jpeg
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
We’ll it came today! It did scrub up somewhat but it’s still pretty yellow and dirty looking. Although it is very quiet and did boot off my install disc without any issues. Haven’t tried to burn anything yet but so far I’m pleased I think a lot of that will be covered up by my powermac bezel and it won’t look to awful. I'm actually wondering if the eject button is going to line up now, guess I'll have to get it all buttoned back up and try it.
View attachment 36078
Nice thing now is that you can burn a CDRW disc that’s bootable and you can rewrite it if you want to.
 

superjer2000

Well-known member
I have never had an issue with a non apple
Optical drive failing to boot as long as I was booting a proper boot cd. I didn’t realize some would not boot. On some Macs pressing c would boot from a cd or else holding down command option shift delete to not boot from the internal hd would always work, although sometimes it took a few attempts.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
I have never had an issue with a non apple
Optical drive failing to boot as long as I was booting a proper boot cd. I didn’t realize some would not boot. On some Macs pressing c would boot from a cd or else holding down command option shift delete to not boot from the internal hd would always work, although sometimes it took a few attempts.
I’m not sure which do and which don’t but I do know for sure that not all optical drives will allow you to boot a Mac disc I’ve had some that don’t.
 

Nynex

Member
If you are still having issues with this, the following may help:

At issue is the fact that the Yamaha drive isn't Apple ROM'ed, so it's easy to say it isn't bootable (as Yamaha support used to do without much thought), BUT ... it is bootable with the longer SCSI ID startup prompt (command/option/shift/delete/SCSI ID#), and if you install Apple CD-ROM 5.3.1 (from System 7.6) in place of your OS's standard CD/DVD driver/extension, it will work just fine as your primary/only CD drive. Just keep the Toast extension in another set for when you want to burn.
 
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