How to add a CD-rom drive to a Macintosh Classic?

[68K-Trooper]

Hello,

I apologize in advance if this has been covered somewhere, but I searched the forum and couldn't find any info.

Is there any way to add a CD-Rom drive to a Mac Classic that doesn't have a HD? I'm asking because I'm assuming that adding a CD-drive would require to install a driver for it?

I heard that a AppleCD 300 Drive should work with a Classic. Anyone know if the 300e Plus model will work too? Also, what other CD-rom drives are compatible?

Thanks.

George

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

You should be able to boot from an OS install CD in just about any external SCSI CD Drive, IIRC.

 

[Byrd]

You should be able to boot from an OS install CD in just about any external Apple-branded SCSI CD Drive, IIRC.

Fixed, Trash! Yes you will need an Apple-branded optical drive to boot from (so a 300e or 600e would be ideal), but with an OS loaded most generic SCSI drives will work (I recall various extensions that supported particular drives, for example CD Sunrise and Adaptec's Toast software also had better drivers).

JB

 

[protocol7]

If it's just for accessing data CD Sunrise is great, free and small. With System 6 you also need to install the Desktop Manager init to stop it from trying to rebuild the desktop on the CD.

 

[68K-Trooper]

Please pardon my ignorance as I'm a bit of a vintage mac rookie.

2 Questions:

1. Are you suggesting that any compatible CD-rom drive will work plug and play without installing a driver for it? My Mac Classic doesn't have a Hard Disk Drive installed, on which I could install a driver. Say..if I purchase an AppleCD 300e plus for instance, will it work without installing any drivers?

2. The classic has OS 6.0.8 on a rom and can boot with a key command. Will that OS be sufficient in order to use a CD-rom drive or will i need a later version of the os on a disk?

3. Can anyone provide me with CD rom models (also 3rd party) which will work with a Mac Classic?

Thanks much in advance.

George

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

As Byrd corrected my statement, any Apple ROM CD will boot a Mac with from a CD with a bootable system on it, like my Hard Disk Toolkit and DiskWarrior CDs as well as OS Installer CDs.

With an external Apple CD it's no problem, with a n internal CD from another Mac in a second source CD Case it's no problem. Minimum config would be an external power supply of any sort and a cobbled together adapter cable.

 

[zuiko21]

As far as I know, bootable CDs have the SCSI driver on a hidden partition, thus you don't need to have a Hard Disk with a suitable CD driver -- but it will be needed if no disk is in the CD drive.

Upon startup, the SCSI-manager in ROM asks every device in the SCSI chain for a driver. If such thing is available, it gets loaded into RAM and full access to the device is granted -- that's the way HDs work!

That should work fine; however, some drivers may be incompatible with some computers/systems. I believe Apple's CD-ROM driver (which is the usually installed one in bootable CDs) will only work with Apple-branded drives, be them internal or external.

 

[Bunsen]

Upon startup, the SCSI-manager in ROM asks every device in the SCSI chain for a driver. If such thing is available, it gets loaded into RAM and full access to the device is granted

Does it now? How very interesting ...

 

[68K-Trooper]

Understood. Thanks to all that tesponded.

Are there any 3rd party cd drives that also work with a classic?

 

[Concorde1993]

Are there any 3rd party cd drives that also work with a classic?

I recently resurrected an old Pioneer DRM-602x, which is compatible with any Mac with an SCSI port. The beauty about this drive is that it has a 6-disc CD changer, which is great if you want to play multiple audio CDs, or CD-ROMs, and not have to worry about constantly swapping discs.

I have a thread about it on the 68k forums (viewtopic.php?f=16&t=17642). I'm currently trying to get it to play audio CDs on my SE, albeit with a bit of difficulty, since the program that is used to control the tracks on audio discs is not compatible with non-Color Quickdraw Macs (it will play CD-ROMs without any problems, however). I think I may have a later version of the software driver, which could potentially be the cause of the problem, as it works perfectly on my 5215CD.

 

[bbraun]

As far as I know, bootable CDs have the SCSI driver on a hidden partition, thus you don't need to have a Hard Disk with a suitable CD driver -- but it will be needed if no disk is in the CD drive.
Upon startup, the SCSI-manager in ROM asks every device in the SCSI chain for a driver. If such thing is available, it gets loaded into RAM and full access to the device is granted -- that's the way HDs work!

I was curious so I looked into this a bit more, and here's what I found.

The Start Manager of IM: OS Utilities along with IM: Devices SCSI Manager section has some relevant information on this. My understanding is: when a SCSI device is detected in the SCSI chain by SCSI Manager, it issues a SCSI Read of sector 0. The first sector contains the Driver Descriptor Record, which contains sector size of the device, location & length of the device driver(s), etc. SCSI Manager loads the driver into RAM, and opens the driver. Subsequent access to the device is handled through that device's device driver. The SCSI Manager then uses the device driver to load the partition map, and adds each partition to the Drive Queue. After all slots, SCSI ID's, partitions, etc. have been enumerated, the ROM then tries to figure out what Drive (from its Drive Queue, which contains pointers back to the driver used for accessing it), first checking the floppy, checking the selected Startup Disk stored in PRAM, and eventually enumerating the drive queue looking for a valid HFS signature and valid boot blocks that point to the system file.

Multiple device drivers are allowed, as the Driver Descriptor Record can chain to multiple entries, but only one is used. Frequently disks will have both a pre-SCSI Manager 4.3 driver and a 4.3 driver. The Apple Partition Map has partition types for the drivers, but the partition map is not referenced in the discovery of the driver AFAIK since it isn't read until after the driver is loaded. The partition entries are to call out the area as used by the driver so it doesn't appear free and get overwritten, but the DDR is the authoritative location of the driver(s) from the ROM's perspective.

The Apple CD-ROM Handbook (1993) indicates this process will be followed for CD-ROMs as well. At the time that book was published, it explicitly states booting from CD-ROMs was not yet supported, but it did note that the Driver Descriptor Record along with the HFS boot blocks needed to be zeroed out because existing ROMs would attempt to honor them.

As for 3rd party CD-ROMs, I suspect 512 byte sector support might be required in order to boot from earlier ROMs. Typical CD-ROM sector size is 2352 bytes, but hard disks use 512 byte sectors, and existing ROMs only knew about hard disks.

As best I can tell, the DDR is requested regardless of the SCSI Peripheral Device Type (returned as part of an Inquiry command). I guess this would mean if you had a non-disk SCSI device (scanner, ethernet, etc.) that could return a DDR and driver through SCSI Reads, you could get a Mac ROM to load any old device driver from the device on boot. That's speculation, but if someone wanted to make random cool SCSI peripherals, it might be worth exploring further.

But, that's all for booting. Almost any CD-ROM should work for mounting discs from within the Finder, assuming proper drivers are available.

 

[Bunsen]

Thanks for following up on that bbraun. The first thing that springs to mind, of course, is whether this opens up a possible path towards DIY SCSI-IDE or SCSI-CF devices.

 

[zuiko21]

This is getting interesting... Back to the original question, I've done some experimenting:

In my SE/30 with Apple-branded CD 300e I put any bootable CD (I used MacOS 8.6 install), wait for it to spin up, then insert a System 7.0.1 floppy (with no CD/SCSI extensions whatsoever) and power up the SE/30: the CD LED flashes for about a second (the driver is being loaded!) then the SE/30 boots from the floppy and... voilà! The CD-ROM mounts on the desktop perfectly. I can then eject it and use any other CD -- no problem.

Tried the same with System 6.0.8... more or less the same, but instead of mounting the disk, a dialog appears asking to unlock the disk because the Desktop file can't be rebuilt Upon cancelling that, the disk is ejected...

Anyway, a non-bootable disk (standard data CD-ROM) doesn't do the trick. The LED flashing at startup is very brief, a single blink -- nothing gets actually loaded. And no CD inserted is mounted afterwards.

With non-Apple-branded drives (Yamaha 6416 & 8424) I wasn't that lucky The bootable CDs can't get the driver loaded -- I think it does load; but upon detecting a foreign drive, refuses to work. Those drives are suported by Toast CD Reader extension 4.0.2, but at a whooping 137K I don't think is the best thing to put on a System 7 floppy. Haven't tried to toast a bootable CD with that extension as the CD-ROM driver in that disk, I think it could work.

About booting from the CD: I don't have presently any CD-ROM with suitable system for the SE/30, but with the aforementioned 8.6 disk (obviously incompatible!) the Cmd-opt-shift-backspace combo tries to boot from it, although the happy Mac quickly turns into a sad one -- as expected xx(

Once again, the non-Apple drive can't boot at all... however, I could boot Dad's PowerMac 7500 from the original 7.5.2 System disk in a Yamaha drive!

In short: get an Apple-branded CD drive, any bootable disk and your usual system floppy, and your Classic will be able to read CDs

 

[bbraun]

With non-Apple-branded drives (Yamaha 6416 & 8424) I wasn't that lucky The bootable CDs can't get the driver loaded -- I think it does load; but upon detecting a foreign drive, refuses to work. Those drives are suported by Toast CD Reader extension 4.0.2, but at a whooping 137K I don't think is the best thing to put on a System 7 floppy. Haven't tried to toast a bootable CD with that extension as the CD-ROM driver in that disk, I think it could work.

I'm not sure if it's a foreign drive problem or a 512 byte sector problem. Do you happen to have a CD-ROM drive that's capable of booting an older Sun? This is an incomplete list of known good drives for Suns. Alternatively, if this is relevant to your Yamaha 6416, it indicates there's a jumper setting to enable 512 byte sectors on that drive. Perhaps setting that jumper might work?

 

[AbelVincze]

Hi, i have an external CD-ROM drive (Yamaha CRW8424), and i'm able to mount it, but when copying files from a CD-ROM to the HDD, it randomly freezes the OS (7.5 - 7.6.1). Sometime, i can copy 50-100 MB from it, sometime it freezes earlier (at boot time for example). It only "works" With Apple CD-ROM extension 5.3.1 (with different versions, i can't mount it at all). Anyone have an idea why it freezes? The external drive have a terminator plugged in.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

If it's just for accessing data CD Sunrise is great, free and small. With System 6 you also need to install the Desktop Manager init to stop it from trying to rebuild the desktop on the CD.

Give that driver a try, it might help because it ought to be more universal than the problematic Apple driver.

 

[AbelVincze]

Thanks for the tips... i'm out of ideas.

The external CD-ROM works fine with a PowerMac 8200 running OS 8.6, ONLY with the Toast CD Reader extension 3.5.5, but it works without any issues.

On my LC III (running 7.6.1), i triead several driver, like Toast CD Reader 3.5.5, 4.1.1, CD Sunrise, Apple CD-ROM 5.1.1, 5.3.1, and with all of them i have the same issue, it freezes sometime while reading from the CD-ROM...

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

It sounds like you've covered all the bases . . . for 7.6.1 . . .

. . . I'd knock it down to 7.5.5 and give that a whirl.

I've had no problems with CD/RW under 7.5.5, but very limited experience with with anything between there and OS9.

 

[AbelVincze]

I didn't tested all the drivers under 7.5.5, but what i tested, was exactly the same... Now i'm trying to find another CD-ROM drive, then another external housing.