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| Author | Optical Drive Woes...... (Read 18214 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Johnny7
64 MB  Posts: 78 System 7 Newcomer! 
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on: November 15, 2023, 19:10
Hi all, been away sorting out optical drive woes for a couple of months. Maybe 6/7 years ago, shortly after buying an LCIII (now w/Q605 board), I bought an applecd sc plus (x1 speed). It got the OS7.5 install job done (after a recap). Then some time later, I noticed that I had quit a few hybrid Win/Mac CD games. Tried one and had a lot of skipping. So, I bought an internal Yamaha 4/4/16SX Drive. That sat around for a few years thinking I would pick up a SCSI external case for it later. Last summer I picked up a (new) cheapy universal external SCSI case w/PSU & backplate. Great, all set. However, I was really stupid and didn’t check the PSU molex connector for polarity. Yup, it was backwards and after plugging in and applying power I hear a snap and the magic smoke arose. Okay, back to square one… so I recently bought a Yamaha external 8/8/24 CD/RW. It worked about 3 times and then started failing. Not knowing why, I started snagging every Mac CD driver I can find. Just no dice. So, disassembled and noticed maybe 7 or 8 SMD caps on the controller and most of them are blackish around the bottom (the 4/4/16SX has no SMD caps). Again, I go on the hunt for another internal Yamaha 4/4/16SX to put in the Yamaha external case. I found one, a 6/4/16SX and it arrived last week (after 5 weeks en route) and is pristine. Had to get it from a chap in Bulgaria (I’m in the US), got a great deal. Finally after years, I have a working (and beautiful) CD/RW. So, excitedly, I D/L RAMA images from MG (had to append .ISO to the CD#1/2/3•image to get them to burn properly (all done with OS Mojave). Yeah, the game works great except there is is still a small amount of skipping when playing the “Interveiws”. I disabled VM and that helped a little. I really want to get “live action” games working well. BTW, I’m using a SCSI2SD for HDD and I have 128M/B of RAM. I’m currently using the Apple CDROM 542 (newest?) driver. So, I have tried Apple CDROM 501,512, 531, 532, and 542 drivers. I have no idea what now would work the most efficiently with this Yamaha drive. So, what CD driver do the experts recommend? I had also previously tried installing the Yamaha Toast 4.1 software that came on CD with the faulty Yamaha 8/8/24. That has its own driver called “Toast CD Reader”. Using this driver doesn’t help the skipping with the 6/4/16SX drive either. But it does work. It’s not that the game is unplayable, but the skipping during live action bugs me. I also D/L’ed CD/DVD Speed Tools but after unpacking the SW I can’t seem to locate a dedicated CD driver within the files. When I fire up the software, it basically does nothing except display a configuration console. Not sure how to get this SW to work. Of course, the other goal is to burn backups to CD. If the BU SW created a startup floppy that would then restore the BU from CD, that would be ideal (I think). What might be your favorite BU software? On a positive note, I can burn CD/RW data files on Mojave and read/copy them to my System 7! As always, love S7T and any reply would be greatly valued. |
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Last Edit: November 17, 2023, 15:13 by Knezzen
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #1 on: November 16, 2023, 10:03
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This is one of those questions that knowledgeable folks would have jumped in with a solution in no time 30 years ago - but today it's getting very hard to find advice. I'm not using any CD-ROM with my IIci. I gave my CD300 away after I (naively?) thought that the PiSCSI would solve all my image-mounting problems. Take that as a disclaimer :-) A few thoughts - playback from CD-ROM was known to be stuttering with slow CD-ROM drives of the day. In particular 1x and 2x CD-ROM drives were OK for copying files from a CD, but too slow when trying to play e.g. a video directly from CD. Like your original Apple SC Plus. 3rd party CD-ROMs always had this history of being semi-supported and semi-working from my memory. I never had one and particularly for that reason. Apple never officially supported them and it was the tinkerers who made them work. There were so many drivers and stuff for them, I particularly remember the CD-ROM Toolkit. Have you tried your luck with that one? I never tested it, but it had good reviews.
Last Edit: November 16, 2023, 10:09 by Bolkonskij
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #2 on: November 16, 2023, 15:06
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I never used CDs for music, my music was either on cassettes or vinyl records so I do not know how computer CD drives work on computers. My first computer with a CD was a Quadra 840 and I do not recall at the time ever getting much use out of the CD. My 8600 came with a CD as well and I replaced it with a Yamaha CD burner. It has been a long time, but I seem to recall it was necessary to do some ResEdit hacking on the Yamaha driver to get it so I could boot from that drive. I moved the Yamaha drive over to the Molar Mac, and by that time the Mac OS had gotten to the point that it no longer cared what CD you used, they all just seemed to be bootable. **This is just a guess, try at your own risk with backups and all that good stuff. I think if you dig into the driver you find that the driver uses a manufacturer and device id, to determine what is bootable, and if you add replace those ids with the ids from the drive you are trying to use, you can make it work. But it is also possible that the device ids, are embedded in the code, and it is done by using something like the Norton Disk Editor, to open the drivers binary and make the id changes right in the code. I would guess this is probably not all that helpful.**
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #3 on: November 17, 2023, 00:33
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I've had a rummage around the usual places to find some info on this burner. I found a good manual for the Yamaha CRW6416SX, if you don't have it. It does not mention drivers anywhere in the manual. It does mention CD software only as being a requirement, and the software needs to be able to support this model. That is, any CD driver would be what gets installed by the minimum recommended OS installation, and/or provided by supported 3rd party CD software. Quote from: the manual: Macintosh users will require System 7.5.3 or above For supported software: Toast Deluxe v4.x supports this CD/RW drive. Toast v4.0.2 for the full install (DL#3 on page). I guess later 4.x versions also support this model. The skipping is probably caused by trying to play more demanding games on the 605's 68LC040 CPU and hardware than it can handle. Personally, I prefer to use the Virtual CD/DVD Utility to mount Toast/iso images, instead. This tends to eliminate such bottlenecks. Only mounting physical media as a means for transferring or installing files when necessary.
Last Edit: November 17, 2023, 00:42 by MTT
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Johnny7
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64 MB Posts: 78 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #4 on: November 17, 2023, 01:36
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Well, I suppose it was quit presumptuous of me to assume that a majority of 68k machine users rely on optical drives for games, audio CDs and backups. I guess I was looking for some quick answers as I’m quit ticked off at myself for wasting 3 weeks dinking around with software and extensions on a faulty optical drive (weirdest experience with an optical drive (Yamaha 8824) I've ever had - bad SMD caps!). I gave CD-ROM Toolkit a go. However, I wasn’t able to activate the drive after copying in the CDRTK extension. After checking the readme file, the CRW-4416S is supported but NOT the CRW-6416S drive (which is what I have). Arggg. Thanks for the suggestion! I copied the “Toast CD Reader” extension back in and that works fine. I also have Toast 4.1.3 installed now (which is where the “Toast CD Reader” extension comes from). I also updated a copy of Disk Tools with an updated CD-ROM extension for this Yamaha drive. You know, the more I think about it, RAMA being one of the more disk access intensive games, I’m probably lucky that it works with minimal stuttering during live action playback. So I’m happy. Audio CDs play back perfect. I'm all about keeping things simple but sometimes just overthink it! One objective accomplished! Now onto; - IP Printing - Backups @Bolkonskij & wove - Thanks so much for your replies! @MTT Thanks for the manual link! "Personally, I prefer to use the Virtual CD/DVD Utility to mount Toast/iso images, instead. This tends to eliminate such bottlenecks. Only mounting physical media as a means for transferring or installing files when necessary." I have definitely got to try image mounting! I haven't even tried that on my Miggys and I should!
Last Edit: November 17, 2023, 02:07 by Johnny7
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #5 on: November 18, 2023, 03:19
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The specs given on the MG's RAMA page give the minimum config of a 33MHz 68040 or faster CPU, or PPC. If that's accurate, then perhaps you are pushing the boundaries with that game.  WRT iso image mounting. One drawback is if a CD also includes separate audio tracks, i.e.; a mixed mode CD (as opposed to music files included in a single session data track). A mounted iso image would only be able to include and access the data track, without the additional audio tracks being present or available. In which case it can be an advantage in mounting a physical CD to play a game, if it also includes separate audio tracks.
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