PowerBook 190 and external CDROM drive...

[Perry]

Hi all,

I've got a PowerBook 190 and I am trying to get it to work with my
external CD-ROM drive (it's a Pioneer 4X CD-ROM drive packaged by Hi-Val).

I've been using this exact same external SCSI CD-ROM drive on my LC
475/Mac OS 8.1 for many years now with no trouble at all, using FWB CDROM
Tookit drivers/software.

Problem is, when I hook it up to my PowerBook 190, via a HDI-30/DB25
adapter with appropriate SCSI cable (DB25 to Centronics) and have a SCSI
terminator block plugged into the CDROM drive as well, the PowerBook *will
not* recognize nor mount this drive. Again, just like my desktop Mac, my
PB190 is running Mac OS 8.1 and FWB CDROM Toolkit, with no conflicting
extensions (ie. Apple CDROM drivers are uninstalled).

I've even tried to get SCSI Probe to mount it to no avail.

Does the PB190 only work with Apple branded external CDROM drives? What gives?

I've tried everything I could think of to get it to work, including
hooking up other devices in the SCSI chain, terminating both the first
external device and last external device in the SCSI chain, no termination
at all, one terminator here, one terminator there, changing SCSI cables,
etc. etc. etc. Nothing seems to work.

Any ideas or experience with something like this problem I am having?

best regards, perry

[Joe Heimann]

Perry <munged@nospam.nonet> wrote:

> Hi all,

> I've got a PowerBook 190 and I am trying to get it to work with my
> external CD-ROM drive (it's a Pioneer 4X CD-ROM drive packaged by Hi-Val).

> I've been using this exact same external SCSI CD-ROM drive on my LC
> 475/Mac OS 8.1 for many years now with no trouble at all, using FWB CDROM
> Tookit drivers/software.

> Problem is, when I hook it up to my PowerBook 190, via a HDI-30/DB25
> adapter with appropriate SCSI cable (DB25 to Centronics) and have a SCSI
> terminator block plugged into the CDROM drive as well, the PowerBook *will
> not* recognize nor mount this drive. Again, just like my desktop Mac, my
> PB190 is running Mac OS 8.1 and FWB CDROM Toolkit, with no conflicting
> extensions (ie. Apple CDROM drivers are uninstalled).

> I've even tried to get SCSI Probe to mount it to no avail.

> Does the PB190 only work with Apple branded external CDROM drives? What gives?

> I've tried everything I could think of to get it to work, including
> hooking up other devices in the SCSI chain, terminating both the first
> external device and last external device in the SCSI chain, no termination
> at all, one terminator here, one terminator there, changing SCSI cables,
> etc. etc. etc. Nothing seems to work.

> Any ideas or experience with something like this problem I am having?

> best regards, perry

The PB 190 does not provide termination power - TP - to the SCSI bus, so
most things will either work best with no terminators at all or with one
of the external SCSI drives providing TP. The drive may have either a
switch or a jumper to have the drive provide termination power to the
SCSI bus. This is separate from termination, this is the power that
the terminator uses to properly terminate the bus. The exact setup that
is called for is to connect the PB using the HDI-30 adapter, attach a
SCSI pass-through terminator, then the cable to the rest of the SCSI bus
devices. Then the last device also gets a terminator. At least one of
the devices needs to provide termination power, and not more than two.
With a short chain, or a single device, you can get by usually with just
one end terminated. But without termination power, the terminater is
floating electrically, and does not work correctly.

The other thing to check is your HDI-30 adapter. If it comes with a
switch, one position is for SCSI target mode and the other is for use as
the adapter to attach SCSI devices to the PB. The ones without a switch
have all 30 pins when used for the first use, but one pin in the corner
should be missing if you want to attach SCSI devices to the PB.

Joe Heimann