9600 completely unuseable with internal CD drives

[CelGen]

I don't have a CLUE what the hell is going on.

So if I have a CD drive on either of the internal buses, they won't work. It doesn't matter if it's the only device attached or if there's other devices like the hard drive and zip drive. The system hates CD drives internally. If you boot with the drive attached you can't mount CD's You'll have to boot with a system CD in the drive and only if you insert halfway through the boot or else you get bus errors. As my original Apple 24x drive is dud I'm using Yamaha's CD-RW drives and I have two 6x and 16x drives. The 16x's will start to boot and then hang. The 6x's will boot a little further and then hang as well. If I try a Toshiba from another system I can CD boot but the instant I move the mouse around, bam, the drive spins down and sounds like its trying to read over and over. The system meanwhile still responds to mouse movement but has otherwise locked solid. Even the power button no longer responds.

Now, if we take ANY of the above drives, put them in an external enclosure and hang that off the external SCSI port.....not a single problem but I'm not going to live with an external CD drive on this machine.

I've tried different power connectors, I've tried different ribbon cables. I've even tried different ID's and levels of termination. I've got one bank of ram filled. This persists.

 

[Macdrone]

Caps?

Did you try an apple cd drive? I don't remember the yahmahas being bootable.

 

[CelGen]

I don't have any more Apple CD drives. Just a pile of caddy loading or otherwise extremely slow drives I'd rather not use.

 

[Macdrone]

But use them for troubleshooting. It may just mean the drives are not bootable. I know my B&W used mine externally but only the DVD-Ram drive ever really was bootable in it.

 

[CelGen]

Apple is pretty global. If they don't want you booting with non-apple drives they lock them out on all the buses. It's not like them to allow it externally and cause the system to crash when installed internally, plus the Toshiba works with anything. Even if the Yamaha's were no good, the Toshiba is known to work with the 8600/9600.

 

[Macdrone]

Pram zap? I usually zap twice before I allow the boot. I missed the toshiba reference but just because it's supposed to work doesn't mean much, if it did cd rom toolkit would never had been made. Then toast came about because apple didn't really think to incorporate that. I have plenty of drives that a tech that passed away his wife gave me with post its that would say nicely coded non bootable internal, external boot.

I'm not saying any of this is your issue just saying it is possible.

Just remember driver issues were an issue, next scsi voodoo was always messing with peoples minds.

I'm just trying to say these things as something to consider.

I'll try a Yamaha with mine and see if I get a similar condition.

 

[CelGen]

Pressed the lil' red button inside and a double zap as per usual with a hardware change. Right now I got the 6x Yamaha hanging out the front. It booted the OS 9 disc, it didn't crash on ADB activity and right now it's running an install. If that works, awesome that it but I still do not know WHY it's working now instead of twenty minutes ago. It could drop dead again at any time and this drive is painfully slow.

Edited: Well it did an install no problem. Still don't trust the mac.

Anyways, it's back to only letting me mount CD's if I boot with the system CD in the drive first. I think I have the Yamaha driver + Toast CD someplace. I'll look tomorrow.

 

[beachycove]

I have three 8600s around here somewhere, and they are close cousins of the 9600s. PRAM problems preventing startup etc. in the 8600/300 604ev are also sort of extreme by comparison with other Macs. I have not seen the same behaviour in the 8600/200 604e, but then that is a different logic board.

Especially if your 9600 is the 604ev version, then I would go with PRAM confusion until some better explanation presents itself.

 

[Macdrone]

Welcome to scsi voodoo and drivers, but again caps, even now more so in the power supplies are gonna start hitting us hard.

 

[CelGen]

I've already stated I'm not using the stock CPU (and this Sonnet runs flawlessly) and that the PRAM has seen repeated zaps.

Okay, so I dug up my Yamaha software disc which was just Toast 4 but that solved the mounting issues under the OS. After I tried two or three discs I switched back in the 16x drive. WE still can't boot from that and it mounted one disc fine but on the second it went back into it's repeated read crap which locks the machine up. Toast documentation says this drive is supported by the extension so there's no excuses now for it not working with the machine.

Before I attempt a recap (because ordering the caps in would take a month), does anyone else with a 9600 also have troubles with CD drives on the internal bus?

Yes, it's preferred that you recap eventually but same goes with changing your car's oil. If you change them too soon you're wasting time and money.

 

[Macdrone]

I'm not telling you anything but again if you use an apple branded slo mo drive you have and it works then the yahmaha is the issue. That's the first thing you should do. If everything is good that way then the yahmaha is a non bootable drive.

I mentioned caps because you said it was different every time, a clear indication of instability. Again I am not saying it's an issue just a possibility as all these over a decade old machines are going to fall prey to.

Pram zap and cuda switch if applicable have always been hardware correctors since the beginning.

I mentioned before Apple liked having hardware and software suited to itself. With cd rom toolkit external cd roms were able to be used as you say yours can flawlessly. That never meant it could be used in the older macs. I have every issue of macaddict and I'll look and see what was bootable and not in that machine, but just because it's mac compatible does not mean its mac bootable.

Don't be upset with anyone here. All we can do is systematically hit each hurdle to give ideas on possibilities. I have a 6300 motherboard with a G3 sonnet cache card upgrade and three out of five times it will boot and work fine , but when it errors on start I have to do everything I can to get that sonnet Init to load for it to not to error out and lock up.

Good luck with your endeavor, when I get home from work, if the snow thaws, I'll try a yahmaha drive in mine and see if my machine has the same issue.

 

[CelGen]

Alright, alright. I'll try a recap.