128MB Magneto-Optical Rewritable

[Cloaked Alien]

Was just gifted this by my boss (the very guy who fixed my dad up with his SE/30 that I recently had techknight and uniserver repair the mobo for) 

Anyways. I did a quick search and I couldn't find out much more than that this kind of media is recently common and standardised. The drive itself however... Does anyone know if it requires drivers for the mac (or pc for that matter)?

 

[bibilit]

Probably the same technology NeXT used for a while (in the Cube) you probably need a driver.

 

[olePigeon]

Well, if you boot up a Mac with it connected and media inserted, it'll mount like any SCSI drive.

However, what you can do is open the case up and see what the make is of the drive.  Hopefully it's Fujitsu.  In any event, these drives are well supported even today.  Even if it's Cannon, Maxtor, or Pinnacle, you should be able to get drivers for it.

I think you'll like it.  You can still buy packs of newly manufactured media for it, and the higher capacity drives are backwards compatible with the smaller media.  So if you were to get a 2.3GB drive, you can still use the 128MB discs with it.

They're sort of like a hard platter version of a floppy disk.  They're very reliable.  I have two 2.3GB Fujitsu drives myself.  I use them for archiving my vintage software.

 

[olePigeon]

Probably the same technology NeXT used for a while (in the Cube) you probably need a driver.

It's exactly the same.  NeXT was the first company to use it in a commercial product, then the standard was made available to everyone.  Fujitsu and Pinnacle Micro were the big guys.

 

[CelGen]

My money is on it's a fujitsu drive.

I forget what I did to make MO work under my quadra 950. I think I just used Pinnacle Micro's 3.5" MO driver and it was happy with hot mounting/unmounting.

 

[Cloaked Alien]

Indeed, it's a Fujitsu. I only did a quick check yesterday as I was busy with some other tinkering. Drive probably needs some lubrication since it doesn't seem to close the door properly after ejecting media. I hope it's in working order. Otherwise I'll try to use the cabinet for a harddrive or something =)

Just hope I can find any drivers, at all =S

If anyone has a link I'd greatly appreciate it, even DOS/Win drivers since I have retro PC's with oldschool scsi controllers =)

 

[waynestewart]

I've had mine for over a decade and never knew there were drivers available. I just plugged them in and they worked.

 

[olePigeon]

http://192.240.0.102/global/support/computing/storage/mo/macssap/

 Straight from Fujitsu's website.

Supports System 7.1 through 9.2.2.  Hard to beat that support.

 

[Cloaked Alien]

Cheers, thanks!

I just tried it a bit with really weird results.

Using the Fujitsu exension or not does not make a difference. With Mac OS 7.5.3 properly booted it ejects the MO media as soon as I insert it, all three disks I have. No errors, no nothing.

The actual drive is a Fujitsu M2511A#N
 

 

[olePigeon]

Are they 128MB MO media?

 

[waynestewart]

Try powering up the MO and inserting the media before starting the Mac

 

[Cloaked Alien]

Yes, they are 128MB. I tried it with my retro pc and it just plain worked. That means the disks are PC formatted. But I should at least be able to Mac format them before they get ejected =P

Well, first try I had the disc in when booting. As soon as I got to the desktop it ejected the disk...

 

[CelGen]

The only other thing that comes to mind is that Fujitsu's drives had a tiny bank of dip switches for setting assorted things, including what it will identify to the host as and "Mac Mode" Which I never understood because Fijutsu's documentation is terrible.

With the driver loaded you should be able to insert a cartridge and if it's not mac formatted or you don't have FAT support installed, it will ask you to initialize it.

 

[olePigeon]

What if you load the formatter first?

 

[Cloaked Alien]

I tried loading the formatter first, same deal.
 

I did however start up my harddrive partitioning tool (can't remember what software it is right now) and while it was running it didn't eject any media. It did however show me that the drive was connected with ID 1 and was working.

I can confirm it has boatloads of dip switches, so that might just be something.

I've got FAT support installed, I haven't verified it though.

At least I've verified that the drive and media themselves are fine and working since it works under Win98 on my other PC =)

 

[CelGen]

You really don't need to worry about defects. Magneto optical technology is possibly the most stable optical storage technology in existance. I've never seen a bad MO disk and I've seen a lot of really beat up cartridges.

 

[olePigeon]

They're essentially floppy disks but with platters instead of, well, floppy disks.

Here's a manual for the 1300/2300 model, dunno if it'll apply to yours.  It does have 4 dip switches for various options.

http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fcpa/mo/discontinued/dynamo-x300-scsi_user-manual.pdf

I didn't know that you can toggle it between MO mode and HDD mode.  The difference is that in HDD mode it'll show up as a SCSI HDD instead of removable media.  Pretty cool.

 

[CC_333]

I should get one of these!

c

 

[olePigeon]

Switch SW1
 
        Key 1   OFF(*)   Reserved
 
Select SCSI ID
        Keys    2       3       4       SCSI ID
                OFF*    OFF*    OFF*    0
                OFF     OFF     ON      1
                OFF     ON      OFF     2
                OFF     ON      ON      3
                ON      OFF     OFF     4
                ON      OFF     ON      5
                ON      ON      OFF     6
                ON      ON      ON      7
 
Switch SW2
 
SCSI bus parity
       Key 1    ON(*)   Enabled
                OFF     Disabled
Synchronous Data Transfer Request Mode (SDTR)
       Key 2    OFF(*)  Disabled from TARG
                ON      Enabled from TARG
Device mode
       Key 3    OFF(*)  Direct access device (INQ = 00)
                ON      Optical memory device (INQ = 07)
Automatic spindle stop mode
       Key 4    OFF     Disabled
                ON(*)   Enabled
Command compatibility
       Key 5    OFF(*)  Sony MO compatible
                ON      ANSI compatible
       Key 6    OFF(*)  RESERVED
Macintosh Mode
       Key 7    OFF(*)  Mac mode off
                ON      Mac mode on
Send/Receive Diagnostic Command
       Key 8    OFF(*)  Rejected
                ON      Accepted
 
Terminal CNH 1   (For drives with serial above 30,000)
 
SCSI Terminating Power
     1-2        3-4        Function
     SHORT(*)   SHORT(*)   Power is supplied from the drive to both
                           the terminating resistor pack and the TERMPWR
                           pin on the SCSI bus. (Pin 26)
     OPEN       SHORT      The TERMPWR pin is not used. Power is supplied
                           to the drive terminating resistor only from
                           the drive.
     SHORT      OPEN       Power is not supplied to the terminating resistor
                           from the drive, only from the TERMPWR pin.
 
Terminal CNH1   (For drives with serial below 30,000)
 
SCSI Terminating Power
     1 - 2      SHORT(*)   The TERMPWR pin is not used. Power is supplied
                           to the drive terminating resistor only from
                           the drive.
     2 - 3      SHORT      Power is not supplied to the terminating resistor
                           from the drive, only from the TERMPWR pin. (Pin 26)
 
Terminal CNH1   (For drives with serial above 30,000)
 
 
     Pin        Signal
      1         CTRGIN (Cartridge in)
      2         -ID2 (bit value 4)
      3         +5VS
      4         -ID1 (bit value 2)
      5         ELED (LED control)
      6         -ID0 (bit value 1)
      7         EJSW (Eject switch)
      8         Ground
      9         DEVMD (Device mode)
      10        No connection
      11        MACMD (MAC Mode)
      12        No connection
 
Terminal CNH2   (For drives with serial below 30,000)
 
 
      Pin       Signal
       1        -ID2 (bit value 4)
       2        -ID1 (bit value 2)
       3        -ID0 (bit value 1)
       4        Ground