Macintosh IIfx Won't Read Audio CDs

[Concorde1993]

Last night, I hooked up my Apple CD 300e Plus external drive to try out the Apple Service Source discs I received during the DuoDock conquest earlier this year. While these Apple-formatted discs read perfectly on the 300e, I was unable to play any music/audio CDs on the drive (I was asked to initialize the CD). The same problem occurred with my Pioneer DRM-602x. 

Now I've successfully played audio CDs on my SE/30 (when it was working) with the same CD drives running System 7.1.  I don't see what the issue is with the IIfx, as it is currently running a clean install of System 7.1. I should also add that the IIfx is in perfect running condition (the capacitors on both the power supply and motherboard were redone a couple of years back). Hard drive is in great shape, too. 

Thoughts? 

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Does it have the right extensions installed?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

As TWF states, you need the "Audio CD Access" extension. It *SHOULD* be included with any CD-ROM Setup installer, but it may have been removed on your system.  It should reside along with the "High Sierra File Access," "ISO 9660 File Access," and "Foreign File Access" extensions.

 

[Concorde1993]

Ok, all is good now. I found the extensions on my Performa 580 installer disc; not sure why they were not included on the 7.1 floppies. 

On another note, has anyone here ever devised a way to connect the audio outputs of the Apple 300e to play sound through the Macs' internal speaker? I can hear soundbites from non-music CDs on the internal speaker, but if I play an audio disc, I cannot hear any music without hooking up a pair of speakers to the external CD drive. 

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Unfortunately, not without a third-party sound card. The audio input on almost all beige Macs is a microphone in, not a line-level input. And the classic Mac OS doesn't know how to transfer the audio digitally through the data stream, only analog.

 

[MidnightCommando]

Anonymous Freak! I beg to differ! 

The audio input on mostbeige macs is in fact a line-level input; that's why it uses the weird-ass long TRS for the PlainTalk microphones! Those mics have an inbuilt pre-amplifier to bring the microphone output to line level, the extra position on the connector is for 5V to power that. 

If you use a standard 3.5mm connection, the Mac will in fact take line-level with no issues  

 

[Anonymous Freak]

8-o

How have I not known this? I simply have never tried. For ~25 years, I have just operated under the assumption that those ports were funky custom microphone ports that didn't support line-level input....

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

All that being said, I think you'll still want external speakers. The internals usually aren't that good.