Yamaha SCSI CDRW killing my zip drives ?!?

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Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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Yamaha SCSI CDRW killing my zip drives ?!?

I picked up an old Yamaha 6416S SCSI CDRW which had been previously used in a PC connected to a PC Adaptec 2940UW SCSI card. I installed it in my Powermac 8500. It showed up on the Apple System Profiler. I had downloaded the latest Mac firmware update for the model from the Yamaha website earlier, but I had forgotten that I had already placed the update file on the PM8500 harddrive. I had the update stored on another computer, so I copied it off that computer with a zip disk and tried to input it into the 8500 using the 8500's IDE zip drive which was hooked up as a slave to an ATA66 PCI Sonnet controller Acard in the 8500. The zip disk was not recognized by the 8500. I then remembered that I already had the update on the 8500's harddrive, so I just went ahead and ran the update which seemed to work just fine. I opened up Toast and thought I'd do a test burn, and Toast recognized the Yamaha. I prepared some data, clicked record, the CD drawer opened and I inserted a CD-R into the CDRW, but it was spit back out, and I got the message to insert a blank media again. I tried a couple of more times but still no recognition of the CD-R. I shut down Toast and inserted a software CD into the Yamaha, and the CD was not recognized. Nothing came up on the desktop. I tried some different things with the CD reader extensions, but no luck, no CD's were ever recognized using the Yamaha, so I gave up on the Yamaha. I removed it and reinstalled the Apple SCSI CD drive to the 8500.

I then focused on the zip drive. I tried all the different combinations, slave, master, different cables, etc., but the zip drive was never recognized. I removed the zip drive from the 8500 and tried a different IDE zip drive, but still no recognition. It didn't show up in the Profiler and no zip disks mounted to the desktop. At that point, I thought maybe the Acard had become corrupted, so I checked Sonnet's website for a firmware update and there was a new one for the Acard, so I downloaded it on the other computer. The Acard update requires that nothing be connected to the Acard to perform the update, so I disconnected the ATA cable in the 8500 and hooked up an external SCSI harddrive and an external SCSI zip drive to the 8500 and rebooted to the external harddrive's OS 9.1. I then inserted a zip disk with the Yamaha update into the external zip drive, and the zip disk mounted to the desktop, no problem. I transferred the file from the zip disk to the external harddrive and ran the Acard update and still no problem. I shut down the 8500 and reattached the ATA cable to the Acard with the main ATA harddrive as master and the IDE zip drive as slave, and restarted. I then tried a zip disk in the IDE drive. No recognition, no mount to desktop, and still no recognition of the IDE zip drive in Profiler. I gave up on getting the IDE zip drive to work.

It then occurred to me that, while I had that setup with the external harddrive connected, that I might try reinstalling the Yamaha CDRW's firmware--maybe it hadn't taken well the first time, and maybe the Acard was causing some strange problem. So I kept the external SCSI harddrive and external SCSI zip drive connected to the 8500's external SCSI port and removed the Acard from the 8500. I removed the Apple CD drive and reinstalled the Yamaha CDRW. I restarted, booting to the external harddrive. I then took the zip disk that had the Yamaha update on it and inserted it into the external SCSI zip drive. This time the zip disk did not mount to the desktop, and when I checked the System Profiler, THE EXTERNAL ZIP DRIVE WAS NO LONGER RECOGNIZED!! What a pisser!!!! It then hit me that the Yamaha CDRW was possibly somehow killing my zip drives!!!! Is that possible? Could the Yamaha have some kind of virus or something that transfers to the zip drives simply by being connected to the same computer? If so, can I recover these zip drives? I thought maybe I'd try to see if these zip drives work on another computer, but now I'm afraid that if I hook them up to another computer that they will transfer the problem to that computer. AGGHHH! What am I doing with all this old hardware? The problems never stop raising their hoary heads.

coius's picture
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just out of curiosity...

Are these drives terminated correctly?

Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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termination

The internal zip is IDE and I tried it in different configurations of master and slave. It was originally slave on the same cable with the ATA master harddrive. It was working before I installed the Yamaha CDRW. The system now does not boot when I switch to the zip as master and the harddrive as slave.
The external zip is terminated. It worked fine before I installed the Yamaha, and as soon as I installed the Yamaha, it stopped working.

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ummm, wait...

you said you pulled that card out of a PC, and put it in your mac, Do you have the appropriate drivers, and is the firmware in the card slated for the mac. The card, if more than anything, would have the thing to screw up your mac, try resetting the PRAM , NVRAM (if you can) the power manager, and anything else. Also, check the cables and the female connectors on the cable. Try switching in known good cables. on ALL the cables. again, make sure the card is terminated at BOTH ends. It doesn't matter if the zip is on the IDE Channel. I have seen improper SCSI Termination screw with the sound on a LC 630. (which before it was making popping noises out of the speakers.) Also, make sure the devices are getting power, on both the 5v and the 12v leads.

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whoops!

I thought you pulled the card out of the PC and put in in your mac, disregard the stuff related to the card . But again, CHECK THE CABLES!

Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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External zip works on Mac Classic

Well, I'm very happy to report that I hooked up the external zip drive to an old Mac Classic II and it worked fine. Yay! So now I'm suspecting that the 8500 system has suffered a software corruption somewhere--maybe the preferences or the extensions, or maybe one of the motherboard I/O chips? It would make most sense if it were on the motherboard since I've started up with different systems on different partitions and drives, and all did not recognize the zip drives. But then again, the external zip drive worked with the motherboard after the failing of the IDE zips and before I reinstalled the Yamaha. Still, the sequence of events points at the Yamaha CDRW as somehow the origin of this problem. What a mystery.

Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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Enough of this...

I first tried trashing the Iomega preferences and restarting, and when that didn't work, I reinstalled the whole system 9. That didn't work. I took the internal zips and tried them out in my 9600 and they work fine, but when I put them back in the 8500 connected to the Acard they still don't get recognized. I put a second harddrive in the 8500 as a slave drive and it showed up fine, so the problem isn't that the Acard doesn't recognize slave devices, IT JUST DOESN'T RECOGNIZE ZIPS! Very strange. I reran the Acard firmware update. Still no luck. So, as far as I can conclude, somehow the Yamaha CDRW corrupted the Acard permanently and the onboard SCSI channel temporarily. ?? Bizarre. Well, that's as much time as I want to deal with this, so I'm stuck with an Acard that works fine except it doesn't recognize zip drives, and I'm throwing away the Yamaha CDRW. What a waste of time. Sorry if this got boring.

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