Diagnosing the 9600 From Hell(tm)

[EvieSigma]

Maybe? Probably a FireWire/USB combo card. 8.5 supports USB mass storage, right?

 

[trag]

So the problem was a bad SCSI CDROM drive?   It wasn't entirely clear to me from reading the thread, but I think that was the conclusion to draw.

Also, regarding those pins on the CPU card, the bottom row is all power and ground, and there's lots of redundancy, so even if that scratch was all the way through, it probably would not have affected functionality.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, I guess the problem all along was the CD-ROM drive. Which is a shame because that CD-ROM drive was a replacement for another SCSI CD-ROM drive that was also bad.

This Sony ATA drive is loud as hell but it works every single time and that's all I need.

 

[trag]

Yeah, SCSI CDROM drives are *old*.   I'm not sure, but I think I've heard that the lasers may weaken with age even if not used much -- although I'm not sure that makes much sense...

There are $8 slot load PATA DVDRW drives on Amazon.  TS-T632, IIRC.  But you would need an adapter (slim optical drives use a funny connector).  Might be quieter.

 

[Cory5412]

8.5 supports USB mass storage, right?

Barely. USB Mass Storage update 1.3.5, if I remember correctly, requires 8.6, and has an entire eight supported devices listed. Entirely half of them are USB floppy diskette drives. (the support for hard disks should be generic but I also haven't personally tried.)

There is a newer USB support file for 8.6, but I haven't had a chance to look at the information for that file.

USB support matured for Mac OS 9 a lot and if you intend to rely on it I would run 9 on the machine.

 

[EvieSigma]

Oh right, 8.6 had more USB support. I should update to that.