Quadra 610 CDROM drive taking disks in then ejecting a few mins later..

[fergycool]

... usually the pot to adjust CD lens laser strength is positioned around the lens assembly - can you see anything there?

I'm afraid not. All the circuitry is on the upperside. Although those pots in the photograph are actually very close to the lens assembly, just on the other side of the board. Also their names seem like cryptic clues - TRK GAIN = track gain? FCS GAIN - Focal gain. Well I am clutching at straws

 

[fergycool]

Sorry to go on again, but I gave the CD-ROM another quick go. I'm now fairly sure all caps are properly soldered (and the right way around!).
By turning the two pots (TRK_GAIN and FCS_GAIN) I have got the drive to always retain the caddy and not spit it back out. I always get a message that the disk is unreadable. But I've noticed that the size is different for every disk I try. Turns out that the size is always the same for the each disk and matches what the size is of the partion, which I obtained using "lsblk" on Linux. See the screenshots. So obviously the drive is good enough to check the size of the partition but not enough to read the actual data.
Is this progress? If I turn either of the pots more than 30 degrees in either direction then the drive stops doing this and just spits out a disk.

 

[cheesestraws]

Quick sanity check - do you actually have the filesystem extensions for CD-ROMs installed? Might be worth a look in the System Folder.

 

[fergycool]

Thanks! Good idea. There is:

- Apple CDrom 5.3.2
- ISO 9660 5.3.2

Is that about right?

 

[cheesestraws]

Sounds plausible. Bum. I was hoping it was going to be an easy software issue at this point

 

[fergycool]

Sounds plausible. Bum. I was hoping it was going to be an easy software issue at this point

Well if it's any consolation I did get excited for a few minutes! I'll go back to twiddling the pots to see if anything changes

 

[nathall]

I remember getting this error at one point and it was driving me crazy. Turns out, it WAS software related in my case. It was some years ago and I don’t remember precisely, unfortunately. What file system are these CDs? I want to say in my case it was something along the lines of the CDs were HFS+ and I was trying them on an earlier System that didn’t support HFS+. Or, they were some other file system and I didn’t have the right extension installed. I know there are two or three more in addition to the two you listed. High Sierra, and something else.

 

[nathall]

Ah! I just check on one of mine and the crucial one is “Foreign File Access.”

 

[fergycool]

Ah! I just check on one of mine and the crucial one is “Foreign File Access.”

I remember getting this error at one point and it was driving me crazy. Turns out, it WAS software related in my case. It was some years ago and I don’t remember precisely, unfortunately. What file system are these CDs? I want to say in my case it was something along the lines of the CDs were HFS+ and I was trying them on an earlier System that didn’t support HFS+. Or, they were some other file system and I didn’t have the right extension installed. I know there are two or three more in addition to the two you listed. High Sierra, and something else.

Nice one! I'll get that extension added straight away and see if it makes any difference! The CDs are a mix of PC ones and a few that I think are HFS but I do not remember. You posted just in time as I was about to remove the drive and add it to the pile of "..things i really must fix one day, but not today!".

 

[fergycool]

Unfortunately that extension is already there. Oh well!

 

[nathall]

Bummer. I’m still not convinced it’s a drive hardware issue. Usually if the System can successfully detect there’s a disc in and its size it‘s software related. Also, if the PC CDs are NTFS you’ll never be able to read them. Do you have any OEM Macintosh HFS CDs you could try? Or even an audio CD?

 

[fergycool]

Bummer. I’m still not convinced it’s a drive hardware issue. Usually if the System can successfully detect there’s a disc in and its size it‘s software related. Also, if the PC CDs are NTFS you’ll never be able to read them. Do you have any OEM Macintosh HFS CDs you could try? Or even an audio CD?

Thanks. I really hope you are right! I'd previously tried audio CDs. Also pressed CDs. I work for a very small Mac software company. It's been many years since we've distributed software on CD (..and even longer since it ran on 68k processors!) but I had a few disks kicking around. I never thought to check what filesystem they have, but I guess I can insert in a Linux box (no Mac systems with cdrom drives left) and see what it is. However, this is all on hold now as the PSU gave up yesterday. I knew I had to recap the PSU, but I was a little intimidated by the task. But now I have no choice!

 

[fergycool]

Just checked one of those CDs and "df -T" on a Linux box tells me it's "hfsplus". My 7.5.5 Mac will not read hfsplus disks right! Looks like you are completely right. Now I'm impatient to get the PSU recapped!

 

[cheesestraws]

Yup that could well be it...