PowerComputing Clone with CD-ROM issues on YDL Install

[Ramsey French]

On 6/19/03 12:52 AM, "Rick Thomas" <rbthomas55@pobox.com> wrote:

> Maybe the fact that it requires a special driver under MacOS is a
> clue?  I had a Power Computing box with a similar CD-ROM drive.  I
> was never able to get Linux running on it.  This box was build in
> the early days of CD-ROMs.  The drive seemingly did not use the
> "standard" set of SCSI commands used by most CD-ROM drives today.
> 
> If that theory is correct, your best bet is to use a more modern
> SCSI CD-ROM.  You could either replace the old internal one, or use
> an external one.
> 
> Just a thought...

For the PowerCenter 120, Power Computing used a modified PowerMac 7200
motherboard along with a lot of off-the-shelf PC components to reduce costs.
They used a standard PC SCSI CD drive.  The Apple CD control panel required
a CD drive that had an Apple ROM on it.  There were some hacks on the
internet that allowed the Apple CD control panel to work with SOME
non-Apple-ROM'd drives.  Otherwise, one was stuck using a 3rd party driver
such as the included FWB CD-Rom Toolkit.  Unless you change the drive to one
that has an Apple ROM in it, the Apple software won't work with it.

But that is a MacOS problem.

Linux should be able to work with a standard PC drive and should not care
about whether the drive has an Apple ROM.

I own a PowerCenter 120 upgraded to a 200 MHz 604e (I don't believe I yet
have the correct BootX command to enable the full speed of the processor).
I had no problem using the YDL 3.0 CD's in the original CD drive and
successfully installed YDL 3.0.  I performed no special tricks to pull this
off, but I did follow this advice for old-world Macs:

  http://www.macgix.com/ydl3oldworld.html