PowerTower Pro CD Drive Issues

[LaPorta]

Hi everyone,

I have been having an issue with my PT Pro (I guess it was always an issue, I just never used the drives much). I am unable to use the internal CD reader and user-installed CD writer properly. With the Apple CD/DVD driver under OS 8.6, I cannot insert a CD and have it mount. If I start with the CD in the drive, the disc will appear, but then I cannot eject it. Upon attempting to eject, I get an error -50 and the disc will not eject. If I try to use instead FWB Toolkit, I get an error at startup that the FWB Toolkit cannot load because another driver is running the drives...but this is after I have disabled the Apple driver with the Extensions Manager.

I am at a loss here as to why this is. I would normally say hardware error, but the same thing happens to both drives.

 

[trag]

I don't know what the underlying problem is, but I think your results are complicated by the liklihood that the disk you're using has a CDROM driver on it in the boot (?) block.    When you leave the disk in at boot time, that driver is getting loaded, and so the disk mounts, and hence FWB can't load.    That doesn't explain why it can't load at other times, unless the driver is still in memory, which it might be on a soft power reset.

Anyway, if you have not already, try experimenting with a disk which is not an installation disk.  At a guess, you're using a PCC OS install disk.

Of course, I may be completely wrong.   But your experience sure sounds like the situation I remember.

 

[LaPorta]

Must have been the drive, or something with the bus. It was SCSI. I replaced it with an ATA drive I got from $5 at Goodwill yesterday, which works perfectly...thanks!