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Panasonic KXL-D745 CD-ROM Drive

Posted by: PotatoFi on 2019-02-28 13:58:16 I've had a Panasonic KXL-D745 CD-ROM drive since I was about 13 years old. It has a SCSI PCMCIA controller, a special cable, and then what I think is a SCSI-2 connector on the drive itself: The KXL-D745 (what I have) only cites compatibilities with PC's. The KXL-D742 and KXL-D783M both cite Macintosh support. I basically don't know how CD-ROM drives on Macs work, but I would LOVE to use this with my Macintosh SE running System 7.0.1. Does there need to be anything special about the SCSI CD-ROM drive to work with my Mac? Would I just need a DB25 to SCSI-2 cable (where can I get one)? Is there any chance of this working?

Posted by: rsolberg on 2019-02-28 22:27:52 You'll need a DB-25M to HDI-50M (M=male) SCSI cable to connect it to your SE.  Here's an example I found on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/SCSI-Cable-HPDB50-to-DB25-6-ft-HD-50-to-DB-25-SCSI-2-to-SCSI-1-NEW/112543707132  I read the owner's manual for the drive and it can be used with SCSI equipped desktop computers.  See here: https://manualmachine.com/panasonic/kxl-d745/1126527-user-manual/ You'll need to enable termination on the drive and set the SCSI ID to something unique on your SCSI chain.  I've posted the pertinent dip switch settings from the manual below.  The SCSI host controller in your Mac uses ID 7 and if you have an internal hard drive, it should be using ID 0.  If you don't have any other SCSI devices, you can set the CD-ROM drive to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.  I like to use 3 or 4 for external optical drives for best compatibility with most of my systems.  Software wise, you'll need to load a system extension in order to read discs.  On the SE, my first choice would be CD Sunrise.  It's available here, near the bottom of the page: https://vintageapple.org/macdrivers/disk.html  Note that it only allows reading of HFS (Mac OS Standard) CDs, not ISO9660.

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