Newer Optical Drive Compatibility

[jessenator]

Relative to my "discovery" last night I wanted to break this out into its own thread. Here's my setup: I'm using a PCI PowerMac (well it's a clone, but let's simplify), with a flashed SIL3112 SATA controller currently running System 7.6.1

 

Tl;DR

Scenario 1) connected BluRay optical drive 100% boots an HFS CD-ROM (e.g. Power Computing PowerCD 7.6) on the PowerMac

 

Scenario 2) connected BluRay optical drive is recognized by ASP and FWB CD-ROM Toolkit v2.3, but will not mount media because it's an "unsupported drive." after booting into the Finder.

 

 

Forgive my ignorance, but why does the drive operate (at least the CD-ROM specification aspect) in Scenario 1 work no in Scenario 2? And to follow up, what prevents Scenario 2 from being a viable option (if only to access the CD/DVD operations of a more modern, or BluRay in this case, optical drive) on system 7–9?

 

 

[trag]

The CD-ROM for the OS installer has an optical drive driver built-in which supports your BluRay drive.

 

The CD-ROM/DVD extension in your hard drive based OS does not support your particular optical drive.   Try using the relevant extension from System 7.6.     Apple goofed and shipped one version that doesn't check the model of the optical drive and just works.   They "fixed" this in 7.6.1, IIRC, and all the 7.5.x versions have the same restriction.  I think the 7.6 version was the "open" version.

 

I'm a little surprised that CDROM tool Kit doesn't do the trick, but I think ver. 2.3 is fairly early.   A later version or Speed Tools CDROM driver might do the trick.

 

I seem to have a copy of SpeedyCD up here:  https://www.prismnet.com/~trag/SPEEDYCD.SEA.hqx

 

you could try that.

[jessenator]

30 minutes ago, trag said:

The CD-ROM for the OS installer has an optical drive driver built-in

So this is something that can't be simply drag-and-dropped from it to a system folder? something intrinsic in the CD image/system somewhere?

 

Thanks for the solutions, trag. I'll give those two options a go this evening. If they don't work, macintoshgarden has FWB v.3.0.2 which should work on system 7.

Edited March 11, 2020 by jessenator

[trag]

4 hours ago, jessenator said:

So this is something that can't be simply drag-and-dropped from it to a system folder? something intrinsic in the CD image/system somewhere?

 

You can probably find the System Folder on the installation CD and get the CDROM/DVD extension out of the extensions folder, then drag it to your hard drrive based system folder.

[jessenator]

2 hours ago, trag said:

You can probably find the System Folder on the installation CD

Strangely the CD's system folder has hardly anything in the extensions folder and no CD driver of any kind. Wonder if it's in ROM?  Very weird! BUT 

 

I managed to find an Apple CD-ROM extension from System 7.6(.0) and it's v5.1.2DT on the StarMax CD (it only has 7.6). Specifically the Disk Tools image, and that worked with both SATA optical drives I've got! The Hitachi-LG DVD-RW-DL/DVD-RAM(?)/Lightscribe box scored 523 in MacBench 4. This thing is probably very dirty (because the computer it came out of was nasty) so I think it might've been handicapped. (~2005 HP Pavilion) | The Dell(?) BluRay drive scored 691 in MacBench 4. It's also incredibly loud... it had little use in its life as a developer's workstation at a previous employer (~2012 XPS i7 machine)

Edited March 12, 2020 by jessenator

[trag]

On 3/11/2020 at 8:22 PM, jessenator said:

Strangely the CD's system folder has hardly anything in the extensions folder and no CD driver of any kind. Wonder if it's in ROM?  Very weird! BUT 

 

I managed to find an Apple CD-ROM extension from System 7.6(.0) and it's v5.1.2DT on the StarMax CD (it only has 7.6). Specifically the Disk Tools image, and that worked with both SATA optical drives I've got!

 

That's good news.   I'm glad it worked.

 

There's a way of "embedding" the driver in the CDROM boot blocks or some such, so perhaps that's how they did it on the installation disk.   My memory of all that is very hazy.   Maybe someone else will happen by to point at a guide to making bootable CDs for older Macs.  I remember that there were details.  Alas, I do not remember what any of hte details were...

[defor]

SATA DVD+/-RW drives generally work pretty well overall in System 7.6.x - even for burning using Toast.

Here's my PTP playing a DVD off a SATA drive (hp GH80-N)

There's a number of different ways to get DVD UDF partitions recognized, but the first step i'd recommend is using the Apple CD/DVD update from 9.1 as linked on System7today- http://main.system7today.com/updates/76x_powerpc.html
I was testing feasibility of using external eSATAp drives since the case i'm using has no 5.25" bays:

[jessenator]

On 3/30/2020 at 12:59 AM, defor said:

I'd recommend is using the Apple CD/DVD update from 9.1 

Which model dvdr did you get going with that version of the extension?

 

One day I might get a Rage128 with the MPEG decoder daughter card (or just the dc).