Powerbook 500 & External SCSI DVD-ROM on System 7.1.x?

If it has a driver for it I can't see why not. Question is are there any scsi DVD drives around?

Yes, there were several SCSI DVD drives produced - many came from SUN Workstations I believe.

SGI O2+ models had DVD drives standard, upgraded from the CD-ROM drive in the Blue O2

I guess the issue would just be finding the driver then, since I doubt they work with the generic "Apple DVD-ROM" extension from Mac OS 8.1.

Were there ever any 68k Macs that had SCSI DVD-ROMs in them, or sold as an accessory? Seems like sticking one of those in an external SCSI enclosure would be my best bet.

Anyone know who made most of DVD-ROMs used in Apple systems? Figure that would be the brand most likely to be recognized by the Apple DVD-ROM extension.

Well I would guess Yamaha made some DVD ram drives but that was OS 8 drivers. That's going to be the issue is drivers for system 7. CD Rom tool kit may have something that will work as its for 7 and used as generic as it could for many drives. I do not remember DVD being an option before the beige PowerPC and all the drives I see in mine at home are IDE for those. None of my nubus powerpc's have DVD drives just all stock CD Roms, but ill keep looking.

I was able to get a new Sun/Toshiba SCSI DVD-ROM for $25 shipped. Not bad.

Here is where I got it if anyone is interested, they have 1 left (I gain nothing by linking to this auction):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251229236002

I think the InTech CD/DVD SpeedTools driver will work for System 7, but I can't even test it because the demo doesn't work.

I contacted InTech to see if they can fix their demo.

Well HD toolkit sees my non apple cd rom and mounts it. Maybe it can or cd rom toolkit will do it.

Know where I can find the toolkits? I tried downloading the CD-ROM toolkit 4.0 from somewhere, honestly don't remember where, but it was screwed up

I have hard disk toolkit someone gave me in a box, it's a cd with serial number or I'd send it your way.

The very first production model DVD hardware didn't even start showing up until 1997. That was the end of the 68k era, and very close to the end of the Beige PowerPC era, certainly the end of the pre-G3 era. No DVD drive was ever specifically marketed for 68k Macs, as nobody thought there'd be a market for such a thing. The Mac OS didn't support DVD drives until OS 8.1 showed up, from memory the first Mac to come configurable from Apple with a DVD drive was the Wallstreet, and they didn't really get serious about it until 1999, when the B&W G3, and later on the Lombard G3, and slot load iMacs showed up.

That said - there are SCSI DVD-ROM and DVD-RAM drives available, and if you can find System 7, 68k compatible drivers there's no reason as to why you shouldn't be able to get a SCSI DVD drive to work on a 68k.

I'll let you guys know how it goes once the drive gets here. I'm going to use an Apple 600e external enclosure to interface it to with the Powerbook.

Enclosure won't change the driver issue, just FYI. You may have already known that I am just printing it.

Well, I've managed to purchase 3 different sets of optical disk tools (FWB CD-ROM Toolkit 3.0.2, DVD-RAM Tune-Up 2.1.1, & Intech CD/DVD Speedtools 3.60) so I figure at least one of them will work.

I did the math, and I can see why there were never any DVD-ROMs for 68k systems. The external SCSI interface for systems that can't support SCSI Manager 4.3, going flat out, can only provide 500 kB/s, which is less than 40% of the speed needed to read a DVD-ROM at 1x speeds (DVD 1x = 1.3 MB/s). It will be interesting to see if a DVD-ROM can be read at data rates lower than 1x... I wonder if I can cache enough into memory to prevent a read under-run...

I dont think that matters.

the track/sector being read from the optical disk will be stored in the buffer at 1.3MB/s or whatever speed the DVD drive is. the SCSI bus/Mac will read it from the buffer at what speed it wants to. 500kB/s. Then the request for the next sector comes in. etc...

the drives operation speed isnt affected by the SCSI readback speed. at least I never known it to. i remember running 48X and 52X CDROM drives on ooooold systems that had nowhere near the speed to read them at that speed. but it would read anyway.

Well, that's good to know. Although, the buffer on this DVD-ROM seems to be exceptionally small, only 128k. I guess I just won't be playing any DVD movies any time soon :lol:

Ya well no 68k DVD movie player would have done that anyway. Although a tv tuner in a performa would let you cheat an input DVD player into the player for the tuner.

Completely ignore the listing and seller I put above. I got the drive yesterday, and it was not the model that was listed for auction. Apparently this seller is either an idiot or a swindler.

Well, CD/DVD Speedtools was no good. Loaded fine, copying files, etc.. was fine, but playing anything that required streaming from the drive went nowhere fast, despite it working just fine on a 20 y/o 4x CD-ROM with the Apple driver. Going to try FWB next and see if I have any better luck. One down, two to go.

You might try CD Sunrise. It is my favorite of the generic drivers; it is freeware and works with almost any drive, the one caveat being it doesnt support CD Audio. It is also super tiny.

//wthww

FWB CD Tookit failed. However, Software Architects CD/DVD TuneUp 2.0.3 was a success! Full CD & DVD reading capabilities on SSW 7.1.2.

Great.

Now my question, did you backup software to DVD you wanted the PB to be able to read?