🚀 go-pugleaf

I posted a query a few days ago about the NEC Intersect CD-ROM drive
for the Mac - I wanted to use one on the NeXT. Well, having recieved
no comments except for requests for followups, I bit the bullet and
picked one up (technically the drive is the CD-36 or CDR-36, I think).

I hooked it up to my NeXT, gave it a unique SCSI address, and did a
manual boot to see what was going on. Many, many scsi access errors,
that's what. I tried several id's, tried starting with a disk in,
with no disk in, and so on. The NeXT just ignored the drive, after
initially finding a bunch of errors with it. I strongly suspect that
while this drive uses a SCSI interface on the MAC, it isn't a generic
SCSI device (one clue is that on the box there is a list of alternative
interfaces, one of the others being SCSI-Parallel, whatever that means).

Another possible problem is that this drive doesn't use eject/load, but
instead has a trap door for loading and unloading. Perhaps the NeXT can't
accept drives that don't firmly load and unload? I don't know anything
about hardware (that much is obvious? :<) ), so I'm taking the drive back.

I would appreciate information on a tested CD-ROM drive that is reasonably
inexpensive. Tested on the NeXT, obiously. And no, the PLI is not reasonably
inexpensive at $675 US (about $900 here in the land of perpetual snows).

Thanks in advance,


Rob Harrap
Dept. Geological Sciences
Queen's University
Kingston, Ont.
Harrapr@qucdn.queensu.ca