Mac cd-rom question...need help from Mac users

[TheOverlord]

*DISCLAIMER* I myself do not use Macs, I am a PC man myself but our school is stillin the dark ages and uses Macs.

If i need to replace a cd-rom drive in an old Performa 6400 machine, can I use any 50-pin SCSI cdrom drive as the one i pulled out looks like a standard drive, no special buttons or anything. If i do need a special type of drive were is the best place to get one for a good price? I don't need any blazing speeds 24x is more than enough and i'll take most anything as far as speeds go. Thanks.

 

[Workin']

Any 50-pin SCSI drive *should* work. But it will not be cold-bootable unless the drive has an Apple ROM (i.e., the drive is specifically designed for Apple).

 

[Zenmervolt]

Having worked on my school's Mac network I know exactly the problem you describe. I'm certain than any 50-pin SCSI drive with Mac drivers will work fine. I'm not certain about the ROM part, but how often do they cold boot off a CD-ROM anyway?

Zenmervolt

 

[TheOverlord]

ok well this is a teacher's personal machine (i cant bring myself to call it a computer, unless its a G4...those are sweet when running Linux) and i want to make sure the if it needs to be cold booted from a CD-rom that it can...so wheres the cheapest place to buy a cd-rom drive with an Apple ROM?

 

[alvy]

<< ...our school is still in the dark ages and uses Macs. >>



hey, watch it there, Chachi - not a good way to get help from Mac geeks.

any 50-pin SCSI CD-ROM should do the job; of course, make sure to check whether the old drive was terminated or not and set the new one up the same way - same for the SCSI ID (standard ID is 3 for the internal CD-ROM).

There is one little thing with Macs and CD-ROM drives...if something goes wrong and they need to boot from a rescue CD, only some CD-ROM drives will allow you boot on Macs. Which ones? *sigh* unfortunately, this is a bit of Mac voodoo that I've never seen an answer to, and I've looked around a lot. Any drive that actually has Apple ROMs (i.e. it was originally sold in a Mac) will actually say so on the label, and of course those will work. I've seen some Apple-ROMmed CD-ROM drives at compgeeks and hitechcafe.com, though they were usually slower ones, like 8x or so.

As for other vendors, therein lies the mystery. I did a search on xlr8yourmac.com, and users listed the following drives as Mac-bootable: Teac 532S, Plextor PX-40TSi/32TSi/12CSi, Matshita CR-8024, Toshiba XM-6201B. Also, Apple has used Sony and Matshita/Panasonic drives (among others?) as their OEM drives inside Macs, so those brands to try if you can't find any of the above.

Of course, if the school has an external Zip or external CD-ROM to boot from in emergencies, you don't need to worry about it.


hope this helped...

good luck.

and stop raggin' on my happy PowerMacs! :| Two SCSI buses, PCI, 16-bit audio in 'n out, video in &amp; out, and after 6 years, still upgradeable to the latest and greatest processors, video cards, USB/FireWire/Ultra-ATA-3000 and all that happy horsehockey. Only drawbacks are RAM prices and bus speed...grrr....

 

[Scaramouche]

Apple CD-ROM drives always seem to command a premium. Any standard 50 pin drive will work and will be cheaper. Keep in mind that not all drives are natively recognized by the Mac OS. You may have to use a third party driver, such as a hacked Apple CD extension or CD-ROM toolkit. Just keep a bootable floppy system disk handy. If you must have a drive with the bootable feature, search here: www.dealmac.com

 

[TheOverlord]

very cool thanks for the help...

and I only rag on the MAcs cuz their price to performance ratio is terrible compared to PCs, granted the G4 can kill a PC in certain apps but on average it seems like I can get more bang for my buck with PCs...besides the software available for PCs is much greater...