CD RW not mounting volumes in 8500 PM

I tried a Yamaha SCSI CDRW in a PM6500 once--don't remember the model, but 4416S sounds right--which had the same problem. I remembering searching all over online for a fix, and found some obscure site with Mac drivers and tried that and nothing, and read elsewhere that Yamaha drives are flaky, especially in Macs, or something to that effect, and finally tossed it in the trash. http://www.zone6400.com/ usually has a good data base on the old SCSI stuff. Might check there. You also might want to post the problem at their forum:
http://www.voy.com/8627/

Don't try to start up from the CD, just boot from the HD as you normally do, with a known-good bootable CD loaded into the CD drive. The contents of the CD itself don't really matter, it can be anything just so long as the disk is a bootable one. As the mac boots it'll see the CD in the drive and load the CD's driver (right from the CD disk itself) and mount the disk. This technique bypasses the driver (if any!) in your system folder and is pretty foolproof method of discovering if the issue is HW or SW.

dan k

Um, his problem is that there's no spinning up of the CD at all so the Mac isn't going to see any CD before or after boot. ASP and SCSI probe can see the drive, may even list the model, but with an incompatible drive ROM, seeing is not believing, oh Lord. The gods aren't going to breath life into that alien body.

i wonder if he has the drive terminated right, since this is SCSI its important to have set right.

my friend has a 6500 and he had issues with a few scsi drives and correct termination fixed them. then he had to get the proper driver ( intech CD/DVD speedtool 6.0 for Os 9) before it would work in Mac OS. before he got the driver ASP still seen the drive but would not work at all. all you need to do is get the driver and then it will work great.

i had a Pioneer DVR-110D (altho not scsi drive or the same brand) but intech CD/DVD speedtool 6.0 solved incompatibility's with OS 9.2.2 and the drive (would lockup when waking from sleep with HDD sleep enabled). then gained burn support by modding the PioneerCDR authoring support extension.

not sure. The bus is physically connected and logically numbered as follows:
mobo = CD RW (#3) = Zip (#2) = HD (#6) = HD (#4) = HD (#5 - boot drive)

Sounds more like a driver issue to me. The classic Mac OS wasn't nearly as friendly with non-OEM drives as OS X is. I remember a third-party CD-ROM driver that was sold back then to get non-OEM drives working, and IIRC some of the Mac clones even shipped with it. I can't remember the name of the software though.

FWIW, the actual config is :
mobo = CD RW (#3) = Zip (#2)= HD (#4) = HD (#5 - boot drive) = HD (#6)

I do think it is a driver issue as well but am clueless on what to look for.

I did a little more digging, and I think the software was FWB's CD-ROM Toolkit. Obviously it's not sold anymore, but you could probably find a copy on the LEM swap list, or eBay.

Found a Yamaha driver here: http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/computer/firmware/fw-02.html

I will try it out and see what it does for my issue.

OK - installed driver and then rebooted. The system died on boot up with the little bomob icon after OT and before the Sonnet extension loaded (2nd extension to load on screen). Tried and failed several times.

I unpluged the power connector inside the case (to the drive) and then rebooted. The system came up fine. I then (while powered up) plugged in the CD RW power plug. I started SCSIProbe v5.0 and ASP - both show the drive. ASP shows the name of the unmounted volume (OS 9.1 install disk) in the CDRW drive, but SCSIProbe will not mount the logical volume.

So I can only see the drive if it powers up after boot up and I still cannot lount volumes once I power up.

BTW: ASP shows drive as a CD-ROM, not a CD-RW - firmware shows as 1.0j (latest and greatest). Cannot identify what the extension is that controls this booger when in Extension Manager.

EDIT - ASP shows "YamahaCDR" v1.1.3 and that it is enabled.

the drive must be spinning the CD, else you couldn't discover the disk title in ASP. Does the machine lock up on boot if the drive is powered but without that disk inside? If not, then that OS9 CD is this problem.

Is that OS 9 disk stamped or a CD-R? Optical drives of that era are very finicky about the media they will accept. For testing purposes one should always use a real stamped bootable Apple CD. It doesn't have to be an OS9 disk, an old OS7 or OS8 disk works fine for testing. You're not loading an OS after all, just the on-CD disk driver.

And another thing - ASP only reports what's installed, not what's actually running. With MacsBug installed, drop into the debugger and run 'stdlog', that'll put the stdlog log file on the desktop and will show what's actually running at that moment.

Once again my testing advice - Boot from the hard drive. With a known-good stamped bootable disk in the CD drive, you don't need any driver extension installed in the boot harddrive's System Folder. In fact you should boot with extensions disabled (holding shift key) and if that bootable CD was sitting in the drive during the boot, you'll have full access to use of the optical drive. If the CD still doesn't show up then the drive hardware is the problem.

dan k

have you tested the demo of intech CD/DVD speedtool 6.0. i had the same issue on my P475 with its LaCie external burner (some different replacement CD/DVD driver extension would crash/lockup the system on boot). i installed the one from intech and it worked great.

intech CD/DVD speedtool

the demo is here

intech CD/DVD speedtool demo

this will work in system 7- OS 9.2.2 on a 68k or PPC Mac. this s a replacement extension for the stock Apple CD/DVD driver ( always keep a backup of the original, cause burning app's will ask for it eventually)

I am in and out right now and not able to do all of this, but the disk is an install disk purchased from Apple directly and has been used many times to boot machines and install OS.

check

check, saw "Extensions Off" on screen

Screen changed to have the little progress bar move across bottom of screen, mouse turned to B&W pinwheel, back to mouse, back to pinwheel, then to bomb.

Well ya know, if it ain't a fawlty CD-R/W drive (likely tho), it does kinda look like a borked-up SCSI chain. Disconnect unused devices, I'd lose that Zip first thing.

Keep in mind you've got two internal busses available, the fast all-internal bus and the slower internal-external bus. You can always move a drive or two to the other bus if you have to. Heck, I'd spread some of the load over both in any case.

dan k

but before I start pulling things apart to reach plugs that are hard to get to, the chain seems fine until I add the CDRW. Is there a jumper setting I may need for this drive on my Mac?

When I plug the power cable in after boot up, it does show up as device #3 (as it is set to), but is there more that I need to do to it.

I only ask because I need the Zip drive and if it is a termination thing, then I want to know while I have things pulled apart (or I need smaller hands).

You know, I picked up a Sonnet Allegro firewire PCI card a couple years ago for $2 on eBay, plus shipping. I think I gave the seller a couple more bucks because $2 was kindof sad. I've noticed that the firewire/USB combo cards sell for as little as $5 these days. That Yamaha probably does 4x burn? I picked up a 16x burn Que firewire CDRW a year ago for $5, plus shipping (those USPS flat rate boxes are a godsend for us in the middle of the Pacific). I actually was only after the Que powersupply for one I lost for a Que firewire hard drive, but for a few bucks more in shipping I got the whole CDRW drive, powersupply, and firewire cable. The burner case and the hard drive now trade off with the power supply.

Used the Sonnet firewire PCI card in my 9600 until I dismantled it. Now it's in a Digital Audio giving me a firewire line to a front firewire/USB2 hub I put in the DA's zip bay. I don't remember what I did with the Que burner's drive. I replaced it with a TDK 48x burner which I put in the Que firewire case instead.

Pulled the TDK drive out of a PC I found on the side of the road. Works great, very speedy. It's a funny thing about that PC on the side of the road. I noticed it the first time when my wife was in the car with me. I didn't stop because I knew I'd suffer the ire of my wife. It was raining after all. It rained everyday for the next three weeks. I had forgotten about the PC. I don't remember the model, but it was fairly nice, so I was very surprised to see it still there on the side of the road three weeks later. I was alone that time. Took it home, cleaned it up. Got some RAM, a hard drive, and the TDK burner. All were fine despite the weeks of rain. Another funny thing is, it was one of the side streets right next to the University where I found it. Students were walking, riding, or driving by it all day, everyday. Are they all spoiled by their student loans and easy credit cards, or just too proud to scrounge? I would have thought someone would have grabbed it just for the fun of seeing what's inside. That's actually one of my main motivators. Maybe it was just the rain. Their loss, my gain.

Both the Sonnet card and the Que firewire burner live on beyond their initial uses with different machines. 50 pin SCSI pretty much died with that 8500. I still have a Sony Xpressa 4x USB1 burner. Burned fine in OS 9. Doesn't work in OS X. I keep it around thinking it might come in handy one day with a legacy PCI Mac or a first generation iMac that I stumble upon, or have to help a friend with. Kinda silly to keep it. It doesn't take up much shelf room, so I don't give it too much thought. 4x is the max I believe on USB1.

Where did you pick up this Yamaha CDRW? Did someone say it was Mac compatible?

Can't remember who, but I picked it up in trade here and recall it was Mac compatible IIRC.

My long term plan is to install a Tempo Trio, and then an IDE DVDR drive I got in another trade. If I could keep them both, then I would but slots are in high demand. I need the CDRW in the interim months until I can cough up for the Trio (or trade for it).

You know, it's shocking how many of the problems you have with your Power Macintosh 8500 would go away if you stopped insisting it had to be a Power Macintosh 8500. *Any* G4 tower other then the very last ones will run OS 9 just fine, and will have IDE, USB, and firewire built right in. And probably cost less to acquire then throwing upgrades into an 8500.

Just a thought, anyway. There may be some honor in shoving ridiculous numbers of hard-to-find upgrades into something like an SE/30 for shock value, but an 8500... eh. It's like dumping $20,000 in "Pimp My Ride"-esqe upgrades into a 1987 Toyota Corolla. The car wasn't interesting to start with, and it ain't interesting now. Even a pimped Yugo has more cachet. ;^b

--Peace

...but so far, it has all been free or cost of shipping, so I will ride this pony as far as it will carry me.

Besides, I need to get off my iBook with the gorked battery and right now it is this or replace the analog board in my Bondi iMac...

all about making do with hardware old enough to be interesting. Heck, my household server is a loaded 9600. I'd have a few less headaches if I'd just swap it all over to one of my several B&Ws or one of my G4 towers. But then it wouldn't be a decade-old PowerMac running a near-as-dammit current MOS (10.4.11) hosting 2/3 of a terabyte of files on a bunch of big ol' SCSI drives.

That's interesting, even if it's a bit more bother to keep running than just shoving a couple of big ATA drives into a G4.

But Eudi, you know all that, so why bother giving sensible advice? (With which advice, BTW, I agree.)

dan k

As you guys may recall, we've had the "why bother?" discussion, or something close to it, with DDTM about his 8500 before:
http://www.applefritter.com/node/20683
But wait, that was supposedly an 8600. What gives? Did you demote your 8600 to an 8500?

You do know about the "pull the pants off, plug a monitor into the hidden plug" trick, right? ;^)

--Peace

... since my problem is a simple fly-back transformer thathates my guts and I wanted a permanent fix,the analog board seemed the way to go.

unless I totally missed something

I mislabeled that machine, but it is the same one and is an 8500. Right now it is running 9.2.2, 3 HD, one zip, on screwy CDRW, 512 RAM.

I still need the Trio, butI am getting there, just need the CDRW to work for my cheap-get-it-free-or-by-trade-a$$ and I am happy.

You still haven't tried any third-party drivers other than the Yamaha one, have you?

Pulling the pants off and using it with an external monitor *is* a permanent fix. It gives you a working computer until the rest of the bloody thing dies. ;^)

--Peace

Firewire/usb card and firewire housing for the DVDR. Then get a DVDR/CDRW to put in the housing, or better yet, just toss the Yamaha and DVDR and get a DVDR/CDRW that's already in a firewire housing. It will probably be a long wait for a free or cheap Trio, unless you save the life of some philanthropist.

I get the feeling, though, this is not just about getting the machine running, but also about the personal challenge of getting the thing running, for free. I was riding my bike home one day and was passing this guy who was really struggling to put in place this huge beam for the patio he was building. I stopped and offered help. He refused my help. Smiled and said it was something he wanted to do himself. It was as much about getting the patio built by himself as it was about getting it built. He could brag about it at dinner parties, I assume. I don't know if he ever pulled his back in the process or not, but he did get it finished.

You might want to reconsider the Superman idea that I suggested before. I think you'd be well suited for it. You seem to want to rise to the challenges. :}

true statement