Using Magneto Optical drives on vintage 68k Macs

[MrFahrenheit]

It's not connected to a 3rd party SCSI card, is it?

No. On a LC475, Apple system SCSI bus.
I am also trying on a G3 beige, logic board onboard SCSI bus, Mac OS 9.1. FWB HDT 4.5.2 freezes when initializing the volume, once it comes to mounting it.

 

[mg.man]

FWIW, I have several 5.25" MO drives (Sony, an IBM one, another I can't recall the make of) that I used back in the day (90s!)... I remember some challenges getting them working, but once set up, they were great. I *think* I was using Silverlining?

Fast-forward to recent months and I've tried and tried and failed to find the magic formula to get any of them working again! I can't remember which it was, but I did get one working far enough to recognize and read one of my cartridges, but all attempts to format or even write to them have failed. Mine are 2.?Gb or smaller, some you can flip over.

Watching with interest and sending positive thoughts!

 

[MrFahrenheit]

FWIW, I have several 5.25" MO drives (Sony, an IBM one, another I can't recall the make of) that I used back in the day (90s!)... I remember some challenges getting them working, but once set up, they were great. I *think* I was using Silverlining?

Fast-forward to recent months and I've tried and tried and failed to find the magic formula to get any of them working again! I can't remember which it was, but I did get one working far enough to recognize and read one of my cartridges, but all attempts to format or even write to them have failed. Mine are 2.?Gb or smaller, some you can flip over.

Watching with interest and sending positive thoughts!

Thanks for the reply. Looks like this is going to be more challenging to get working than I first thought. I'm kind of used to actual physical disks just "working" when compared to the work involved sometimes to get a SCSI2SD image working for the first time, for example. The reason I prefer to stick with original vintage hardware.

I tried formatting a disk using Transoft SCSI Director Pro 4.0. It took *forever*. It said it successfully formatted the disk, installed the driver, and it said it mounted it, but it did not appear in the Finder. There is a test disk option, which I clicked, and while it was able to give me millisecond access times for the supposedly working volume, both for read and write tests, it reported zero kb/second transfer rates. Leading me to believe it still isn't working properly.

Then it dawned on me: these drives have several settings on them that I have not seen on 3.5" magneto optical drives, direct access and optical device modes. Per the manual for this particular drive:

Determine which operating mode you need (optical memory device or direct access device) and whether you want write verify ON or OFF

The following are the selections available on the mode switch:
2 - optical memory device with write verify ON (default).
0 - optical memory device with write verify OFF.
1 - direct access device with write verify OFF.
3 - direct access device with write verify ON.

This drive I purchased on eBay as "tested and working". I asked the seller today how it was that they were able to test and verify that it worked, and the reply was "my brother tested it. He's a computer wizzard. He connected it to his SCSI port on his computer. Hope that helps". Nope, it doesn't, as that means they likely didn't verify it by writing to a disk!

This HP 9100mx drive came with the mode switch set to 3. I wonder if changing it to an optical memory device will allow it to work properly. The Sony S561 that I purchased also has dip switches for setting different modes. I'll have to investigate what they are as well. I can't touch the thing at the moment because I clicked "auto setup" in SCSI Director to see if it would format, create a partition, and mount, automatically and it will take the hours it did last night just to format the darned thing.

I'll report back what I find, or don't find.

Edit: here are the settings for the dip switches on the Sony S561:

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Success!! Well, at least partial success.

I downloaded Software Architect’s Disk Drive TuneUp from MacintoshGarden and it was able to successfully install its driver for the disk, format it, and MOUNT IT on the desktop. Although, it limits my partition sizes to 2GB, it’s a start! Just copying Max OS 9.1 onto the MO disk partition it created and its copying over. I’ll attempt to boot from it and report back. This is great news as I had no idea if the drive really did function or not.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

I have the complete working solution for my situation, with 9.1GB 4096 byte per sector 5.25” magneto optical disks, on the HP SureStore Optical 9100mx drive, on Mac OS 9.1 on a beige G3!

I successfully installed Software Architect’s Drive TuneUp version 3.1.4 (downloaded from Macintosh Garden https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/disk-drive-tuneup-314 ) and removed the prior drivers from the disk that were causing issues. It allowed me to format each side of the cartridge to 4.3GB per side, in either Mac OS HFS or HFS+ and it successfully mounted to the desktop. I got the full capacity available per side!

I formatted the volume as an HFS standard (for compatibility with older Mac OS versions), copied about 800MB to the volume, including a full Mac OS 9.1 installation system folder, and rebooted. It boots from the disk. Everything works as expected.

On this particular drive, I have it set to “3” for drive options, which, as per the manual, is a direct access device, write verify on.

I’ll do more testing when I can, on other hardware (like my LC 475 and Mac OS 7.5.5). I’ll also then try this disk inside my Sony MO Disk Unit RMO-S561and report those results back as well.

 

[mg.man]

I have the complete working solution for my situation ... I successfully installed Software Architect’s Drive TuneUp

Ooo... well done! I do remember Drive TuneUp from back in the day - maybe that was the secret sauce I used back when? I'll see if I can find some Mac-time this coming weekend and give it a spin!

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Ooo... well done! I do remember Drive TuneUp from back in the day - maybe that was the secret sauce I used back when? I'll see if I can find some Mac-time this coming weekend and give it a spin!

I’d love to hear of your experience! Good luck!!

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Success with the Sony drive as well.

The same disk works in the HP drive and the Sony RMO-S551. Strangely, Disk TuneUp 3.1.4 reports the Sony as SMO-F561. Not sure of the difference.

I can format and install system software on a 9.1GB MO (4.3GB/side) disk, on Mac OS 7.5.5 (on a LC475) Upto at least Mac OS 9.1 on a G3. I can boot from a drive, I can setup multiple partitions, and I can even use the entire one side of a disk as one partition.

It’s not the fastest, but it’s not bad either. I’ll take the slower speed together with accessibility to 4GB on a cartridge any day.

I should take a cartridge with 2x 2GB partitions and try it out with System 6 on a Mac SE. I wonder what that experience would be like.

If anyone is looking at using an old magneto optical drive on a Mac, it’s an interesting experience. Just keep in mind that not all disks are compatible with all devices. The 3.5” MO drives seem to offer the best backwards compatibly. Those can hold Upto 2.3GB for a single disk (and you don’t have to flip them over), and even those 2.3GB drives can read and write to the original 128MB MO disks.

The 5.25” drives can read smaller format disks but cannot write to all of them.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

If SCSI DVD drives were hypothetically bootable on system 7 and/or system 7 had a UDF driver or we could make HFS/HFS+ formatted DVDs -- we'd still need to balance between DVD and MO in terms of what type of longevity we're looking for. The same is true of CD-ROMs and CD-ROMs have the advantage of that there are a lot more of 'em hanging around.

I've casually looked this up, and it seems that DVD UDF support wasn't present until Mac OS 8.1 or higher. Whether it could be made to work on earlier Mac versions is up to whether anyone here has a SCSI DVD drive that supports Mac OS and if they can test on a 68k Mac under 7.5.5 (the most backwards-compatible Mac OS).

Still, I think there are advantages to magneto optical over DVD, including DVD-RAM:

1. They can be modified on your classic Mac machine. Mounted RW disks can be written to. This is helpful if you want to boot from one.
2. You can boot from them. Not sure about booting from DVD on a 68K under 7.5.5, I have a feeling it would never work.
3. Availability of drives and media is still somewhat plentiful, at around the $100 mark for drives and around $5/disk for media if sourced from the lower priced sellers. I got some 2.6GB media at under $2 a disk (new sealed), and just picked up some more 9.1Gb disks for under $4 each (used).
4. A SCSI disk driver works on MO disks, meaning the OS sees them as any other SCSI device (at least for 5.25" 9.1GB drives I've tested). On 3.5" the MO Drive Extension linked to earlier in this thread works on all of the drives I've tested, from 128MB through 2.3GB on Mac system 7-Mac OS 9.2.2.
5. Longevity - I believe MO disks will outlive DVD (either DVD-R or DVD-RAM phase-change) because of the nature of the recording medium. Dye recordables are questionable after even just 10 years in some instances.
6. They're cool! You can custom print labels on fancy color printers and apply them to disks, and they take on an 'official' look. Using my MO disks with fancy labels feels like using an official Apple product, and hand-marked CDs and DVDs just don't feel the same. Maybe it's just me, liking to be 'fancy'.
7. The 3.5" drives are easily retrofitted to mount inside any 3.5" slot, and can easily be used behind a Zip drive bezel, and even the 3.5" floppy drive slot/bezel. Who needs a 3.5" floppy anymore anyways? Put a 1.3Gb MO drive inside an LC475 and you have reliable, fast, cheap storage accessible to you. Add a USB, FireWire, IDE, or (with SCSI card) a SCSI MO drive to your more modern Mac, and you have a very good bridge that is also vintage.

As you can tell, I'm a fan of retro/vintage solutions. I don't use any SD card solutions in any of my Macs. I do have some to try out in the future, but for now I've been more than satisfied with how these vintage solutions work.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

I found a review of Magneto Optical drives in Macworld Magazine, August 1997, page 116.

Here is a shot of the various drives, and it lists the software each included. Documenting here because a lot of these details are lost to time.



I have found a copy of the Pinnacle Formatter version 3.3 on the wayback machine, and uploaded it to the Macintosh Garden here: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/pmo-formatter

 

[MrFahrenheit]

An update to using a G5 with SCSI card as a bridge for 5.25” magneto optical:

I don’t know if it’s a limitation of Mac OS X 10.4.11, my PCI-E SCSI card and drivers, or the particular MO drive I’m using, but formatting a 9.1GB (4.3GB/side after formatting) on an HP SureStore 9100mx results in Disk Utility on OS X to freeze. I had to reboot the machine to get the disc out, without getting the chance to write anything to it.

The partition map is only partially written, resulting in a disc that appears corrupt when inserted on my LC475 with Mac OS 7.6.1. I reformatted that disc using the (tried and true) Software Architect’s Disk Drive TuneUp! version 3.1.4 and it came back to life.

Inserted that same disc on my G5 in OS X and it mounts just fine now, and I was able to copy files over at what appears to be 2MB/second. Eject and tried the cartridge on the Mac LC 475 and it mounts and reads just fine.

Now I can copy my vintage software archive from the 2TB drive in the G5 onto large cartridges that can be read on the vintage beige Mac hardware. It’s a lot more convenient to move 4.3GB per partition than 1GB Jaz or 1.3GB MO.

So for anyone looking to use this method and format as a bridge, it works great, provided discs are first setup and partitioned on your pre-OS X system.

 

[zefrenchtoon]

Hi!

Sorry I'm late in the topic but this reminds me when I was young and my father had to backup regularly its powerbook 170 hdd (then LC630 hdd). His computer seller sold him a 3.5" SCSI 230MB MO drive and it was so wonderfull !! (before, we had a SyQuest 44 ...)
Few years later, to go with its brand new B&W G3, he bought a 640MB SCSI MO drive which was backward compatible with 230 so he could go back and forth between its older macs and the G3 using 230 media.

Now, I got all MO disks, the 640 drive and ... the 640 drive functions sometimes and, today, I did not find the right way to make it working reliably so I've bought a second hand 1300MB USB-2 MO drive to be able to make backups of my old disks to emulate them in my BlueSCSI.

The USB model works flawlessly on my 2010 MBP and still able to read/write 230/640 MB disks.
The day I find the way to use my 640 flawlessly, I will have an easy way to transfert files without using network.

[Edit]
I forgot to mention that the drivers we used and that were sold with the drives are: Formac Manager 6.5 and Drivor but I'm sure that I also used Intech's HardDisk SpeedTools (which has the option to install a specific driver for MO drives) and maybe Disk Drive TunUp too. About Drivor, it is a software suite made in France and only available in French.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Hi!

Sorry I'm late in the topic but this reminds me when I was young and my father had to backup regularly its powerbook 170 hdd (then LC630 hdd). His computer seller sold him a 3.5" SCSI 230MB MO drive and it was so wonderfull !! (before, we had a SyQuest 44 ...)
Few years later, to go with its brand new B&W G3, he bought a 640MB SCSI MO drive which was backward compatible with 230 so he could go back and forth between its older macs and the G3 using 230 media.

Now, I got all MO disks, the 640 drive and ... the 640 drive functions sometimes and, today, I did not find the right way to make it working reliably so I've bought a second hand 1300MB USB-2 MO drive to be able to make backups of my old disks to emulate them in my BlueSCSI.

The USB model works flawlessly on my 2010 MBP and still able to read/write 230/640 MB disks.
The day I find the way to use my 640 flawlessly, I will have an easy way to transfert files without using network.

[Edit]
I forgot to mention that the drivers we used and that were sold with the drives are: Formac Manager 6.5 and Drivor but I'm sure that I also used Intech's HardDisk SpeedTools (which has the option to install a specific driver for MO drives) and maybe Disk Drive TunUp too. About Drivor, it is a software suite made in France and only available in French.

That’s awesome! Thanks for the info.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

I picked up a lot of 5.25” 9.1GB MO disks, and tried using them. I’m having nothing but problems. Looking at the disk surfaces, they look like they have some dust/grit on them, and some residue, and in one spot on nearly every disk there’s a grey residue that looks like it could be a Smokey film. I tried using a few as-is and they fail to write. I used a qtip and isopropyl 99 and it removes the film but leaves behind its own film. So I tried just a dry qtip and carefully rubbing the surface to remove this hazy Smokey film.

Here’s my experience:
1. Every disk is reported as “this disk requires formatting” when I insert into the drive and launch my SCSI driver tool (Software Architect’s Disk Drive TubeUp! 3.1.4 for Classic Max OS). This is not what I’ve ever seen on any other MO disk at all. I suspect the original owners wiped them using some special tool.
2. Formatting the disks sometimes fails.
3. On disks that I can format, creating a volume / partition fails. Reformatting helps and then a partition can be created.
4. Once I get past all of the challenges above, copying data to a disk fails either immediately or randomly as I fill the disk.

I’ve thought that the drives were the failure point on MO, not disks. Are these disks just bad? Or could they need actual cleaning? Am I damaging them by using a Q-tip and should I use an actual disk cleaner designed for MO?

I’ve managed to get one disk working that I used the q-tip on the surface by formatting and then doing a secure erase using Disk Utility on Mac OS X (that writes zeros to the entire disk). Could it just be a matter of the disks having some strange format or the drive that previously used them messed them up somehow?

I don’t normally like using used disks but up until now I’ve had zero issues with used MO disks. I have hundreds and never seen this. I’m thinking they may have been exposed to some sort of fire but not heat (as in, they were in a location that had smoke damage).

The Smokey film on the disks seems to be in one spot, on both sides, and is just over the distance of the shutter opening. Maybe they were in a jukebox that experienced a failure, I don’t know.

Thoughts? Or did I just buy a stack of $70 coasters ?

 

[olePigeon]

I assume you tried it with the Fujitsu MO driver + Fujitsu Formatter?

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Y

I assume you tried it with the Fujitsu MO driver + Fujitsu Formatter?

Yeah that one doesn’t work with the 9.1GB drives I have. I need to use an actual SCSI disk formatter, or which I’ve only found Disk Drive TuneUp! to be reliable.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Update on the used 9.1GB MO disks I bought that were not working.

As a test, I took a handful of them and physically cleaned the disk surface using a clean q-tip for each side, and then did a security erase on Mac OS X to write zeros to the disk. I then inserted into my Mac G3 running OS 9.x and Disk Drive TuneUp! 3.1.4 and I did a Format, and those handful of disks seemed to work just fine. Two of the 8(?) still showed write errors so I set those two aside for now.

This is what the disk surface on these looks like in one particular spot, which seems to correspond to an open area at the top of the cartridge where the shutter moves. Some environmental contaminants were seemingly vaporized and blown in here.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Update on the used 9.1GB MO disks I bought that were not working.

As a test, I took a handful of them and physically cleaned the disk surface using a clean q-tip for each side, and then did a security erase on Mac OS X to write zeros to the disk. I then inserted into my Mac G3 running OS 9.x and Disk Drive TuneUp! 3.1.4 and I did a Format, and those handful of disks seemed to work just fine. Two of the 8(?) still showed write errors so I set those two aside for now.

This is what the disk surface on these looks like in one particular spot, which seems to correspond to an open area at the top of the cartridge where the shutter moves. Some environmental contaminants were seemingly vaporized and blown in here.

View attachment 47440

Update on the batch of bad disks:

I purchased a MO disk cleaning kit, made by Sony. I then cleaned a disk that refused to work, did a security erase (wrote all zeros), then formatted it, and then copied data on both sides to completely fill it.

It works just fine now. I don’t know what’s in the cleaning kit but the tube of fluid is toxic according to the bottle.

 

[lobust]

Update on the batch of bad disks:

I purchased a MO disk cleaning kit, made by Sony. I then cleaned a disk that refused to work, did a security erase (wrote all zeros), then formatted it, and then copied data on both sides to completely fill it.

It works just fine now. I don’t know what’s in the cleaning kit but the tube of fluid is toxic according to the bottle.

That's interesting. I don't have any currently but a nice MO drive is on my list, so I have been quietly following this thread.

What kit did you use and what did the process entail to clean the disks?

 

[MrFahrenheit]

That's interesting. I don't have any currently but a nice MO drive is on my list, so I have been quietly following this thread.

What kit did you use and what did the process entail to clean the disks?

The cleaning kit I bought is this Sony one



It contains a tool for holding the shutter open, a magnetic tool that you put on the disk hub and can turn the disk easily, and two tubes of special cleaning fluid and a special cleaning cloth.

You open the shutter, install the magnetic hub spinner, place a couple of drops of fluid on the optical surface, and lightly run until dry with the cloth. Then rotate the spinner and clean the next section accessible through the shutter gap.

Until now I’ve had no troubles with used MO disks. These ones I bought had some weird greasy smoky film that required removal for the disks to properly work.

I would suggest where possible to get new media. You shouldn’t have to clean them for home hobby use.

As for MO, I thoroughly enjoy the format. 3.5” is fun and can be made to go where a Zip drive was, and even in the floppy bay of some Mac’s. They seem to be more readily available but capacity is lower.

5.25” is not as reliable, apparently, and sourcing drives and disks seems more difficult. Sellers believing their rare disks are worth $100 and so on.

The benefit to larger capacities like 5.2GB, 8.6GB, and 9.1GB is the cost /GB and the sheer size of one disk. The 5.25” MO are reversible like cassette tapes and records of the 80s. They add the capacity of both sides to get the total, so a 9.1GB drive and disk is really 4.55GB per side, and formats to about 4290MB in the Mac OS.

If you don’t care about the larger size, a 640MB or 1.3GB 3.5” MO is ideal. I use them as bridge devices, too. There are 3.5” MO drives in virtually any interface you can think of. Internal/external SCSI, IDE, firewire, and internal/external USB.