freeman@argosy.UUCP (Jay R. Freeman) (08/11/90)
I have an old, old, old Mac II -- took delivery in June or July of
1987. Recently I bought an Apple CD ROM drive -- newish model, no
fan. I could not install and configure the system so that digital
CD-ROM discs could be mounted. I went through software installation
twice, swapped SCSI cables and terminators left and right, and
substantially exonerated cables and termination by operating my Apple
40 MByte Tape Backup unit when it was beyond the CD-ROM drive in the
SCSI chain, like this:
Mac II -------- CD-ROM Drive --------- Tape Backup unit.
With this setup the Mac II could communicate with the Tape Backup
unit but not with the CD-ROM.
I was able to get the CD-ROM Drive to mount an audio disc (at
least I think so -- I didn't have a headset to check whether I could
get sound out of it -- but an audio disc icon showed up on the
desktop, and the CD-ROM desk accessory found the right number of
tracks on the disk).
I tried two different digital CD-ROMs (the one that came with the
drive and another with some MPW software on it), tried a vanilla boot
disc with nothing on it but what the Apple Installer put there
(including the CD-ROM installation, of course), and also tried booting
off the system disc that came with the CD-ROM drive. No go.
Throughout all this, the symptom was that the system would hang
for several minutes whenever I rebooted the Mac II with the CD-ROM
drive powered up and a CD-ROM disc inserted. Then it I got a dialog
box asserting that the disc was unreadable and asking if I would like
to initialize it. That's a bit difficult with a CD-ROM ...
So I took it back to the dealer from whence it came, and of course
it worked just fine on a Mac II they had in house. I expect there
will be more dialog between dealer and me, and I suspect they will
eventually figure out what the problem is. But I thought I would ask
if anyone is aware of any problem with operating Apple CD-ROM drives
with very early Mac IIs; I know there are ROM and hardware
difficulties in some early IIs that affect other matters.
Almost forgot: Mac II, 80 MByte internal drive, 5 MByte RAM,
System 6.0.5 and Finder <whatever came with 6.0.5>. Also tried under
MultiFinder 6.1b9, found the same behavior.
-- Jay Freeman
<canonical disclaimer -- I speak only for myself.>