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External CD Rom Drive
Posted by: NickNick on 2014-09-02 12:17:35
Hello there.  I have a question with something. I'm trying to hook up an external CD Rom drive to a Macintosh Performa 476. I'm thinking I might just need a driver but not sure. The Macintosh can see the CD drive as when I use SCSI Info it lists is as a Pioneer CD-Rom DR-124x. However, there is not one sticker on the device itself. I did take it apart and the internal drive is indeed a Pioneer.

I even bought an active terminator just in case but turns out I wont need that. When a CD is inserted I can hear it spin up and the led flashes but the image does not show up on the screen. I am not sure what I am missing that's why I think it might be a driver. Any ideas??

Thanx. 🙂

Posted by: Macdrone on 2014-09-02 13:14:50
Need a pioneer mac cd rom extent ion (driver). Cd rom tool kit may be the easiest to make it work if you can't find the legacy software.

Posted by: NickNick on 2014-09-04 04:21:32
Thank you Macdrone for your input. As I was not able to find a driver specifically for Pioneer products I however was able to use CD Toolkit and it seems to mount and work for all disks.

Posted by: NickNick on 2014-09-04 07:01:14
I just noticed as well that when playing an audio CD I have no sound being heard through the computer. Its reading the disk just fine. Any ideas as to why this may be??

Posted by: Macdrone on 2014-09-04 08:01:15
Not all macs or drivers allow playback over SCSI. Look on the drive if it has the RCA type jacks for audio you can hook up to those, or try unplugging the audio cord in the external drive to see if that allows playback. Like internal on a Powermac 6100 you had to hook up the cd roms audio cable to the motherboard for cd audio.

Posted by: techknight on 2014-09-04 09:24:45
It was like that for PC as well until around the XP days.

Posted by: Cloaked Alien on 2014-09-27 00:02:57
I'm hijacking this thread as I've got some external CD woes that maybe you can help me with =)

I've tried two different units without any success. Both shows up as SCSI devices when running HDT Primer but the aren't recognized as CD-roms even with the 5.3.2 CD-Rom software installed.

The devices are Toshiba XM-6201B and Sony CDU948S.

Is it as easy as these units simply being too modern/unsupported and requiring (possibly non-existant) 3rd party drivers?

Posted by: Paralel on 2014-09-27 11:43:19
Use CD/DVD Speedtools, I can get it to mount an external SCSI DVD-ROM under 7.1.1. Anything is possible.

Posted by: Cloaked Alien on 2014-09-27 13:11:19
Unfortunately that still seems to be for sale, and at $49.95 no less. I'd rather go the free route, if possible =)

Posted by: Paralel on 2014-09-27 13:58:43
Then I would suggest Macintosh Gardening. I think you will find what you are looking for there.

Posted by: rsolberg on 2014-09-27 18:41:57
I just loaded the freeware CD-Sunrise driver on 7.5.5 to test my HP CD Writer 9200. It may be worth a try if others aren't working. I wasn't sure if it'd work as the drive is considerably newer than the driver, but success! (with Mac software discs)

Posted by: Cloaked Alien on 2014-09-28 00:52:07
Speedtools did the trick! Cheers! =D

I'll check out CD-Sunrise as well =)

Posted by: Paralel on 2014-09-28 12:43:21
There really is no equal when it comes to CD/DVD Speedtools. It is the best product out there for just about any kind of modern optical hardware on an old Mac. The HardDisk Speedtools seems to be a little less compatible, but if it works with your solid state hardware, you can be sure it will provide the best performance.

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