CDROM Boot Centris 650 - Macintosh Garden

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2011, March 14 - 5:56pm

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

CDROM Boot Centris 650

I am having a problem booting any of the restore apple cds.

I have a Centris 650 that I installed a Toshiba XM-6201B. The drive was pulled from a working Sun Server. I have verified that it works by attempting to install A/UX. The system boots from the floppy, the install starts and recognizes the CD, I let it go as far as the partitioning of the HD, which at this point the floppy has been ejected and is running off the CDROM.

I burned a copy of both the Apple Legacy CD as well as the System Software 1 CD. Both discs cause a Sad Mac error of 3/f which corresponds to a bad instruction. I burned all three discs with CDBurnerXP on my windows machine. I used the lowest speed setting.

Since the hardware seems to work, does anybody have any idea what is going on?

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2011, March 14 - 7:27pm

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

If my dim memory serves me well, my own attempts at installing A/UX onto a Centris 650 failed and I gave up trying to get it working on that machine. My C650 had a full "040 CPU too (which A/UX requires).

From the A/UX FAQ (part 2):

G.02) What's the minimum system I need (CPU, disk and RAM) to run A/UX?

...A/UX 3.0.1 (and later) adds support for the
Q800 and Centris Machines (the Centrises _must_ have the real 68040 w/FPU -
See Q&A #G.03). A/UX will run on the Quadra 610 and 650s (recall that A/UX
requires the _real_ 68040 chip!) with a little bit of work:

You should make a copy of the A/UX Install Boot floppy and then copy the
Enabler for the Q610|650 onto this copy. You then boot up from this floppy
and install A/UX as usual. Finally, you'll need to copy the Q610|650
Enabler onto the A/UX MacPartition (or whatever MacOS disk you will use
when starting up your Mac and booting A/UX); do this by first booting off
a boot floppy or boot CD and then copy the Enabler over. You do _not_ need
to make any changes to the A/UX System Folder (i.e. the System Folder used
under A/UX).

Besides trying to get A/UX working, have you tried booting from a universal non specific Mac install CD? Any Mac OS from 7.5 to 8.1 should work on the C650 without need for specific System Enablers.

When booting from CD using a non Mac CD drive the magic keys to use to force the Mac to use the drive and boot from it are holding down the "Shift, Option, Command & Delete" keys until (hopefully) you will see a smiley Mac face appear on your screen.

2011, March 14 - 8:29pm

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

I have AUX working just fine. My problem is I can't boot from a CD to install Mac OS. I tried the Apple Legacy CD that contains a version of Sys 7 I believe and the System Restore CD that boots 8. I'll try one of the retail disks and see what happens.

2011, March 14 - 10:08pm

24bit

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Joined: 2010 Nov 19

Can you boot from a 7.X floppy maybe, with a CD ROM driver and HD setup on it?

2011, March 15 - 12:45am

rpangrazio

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I can try, I need to find my USB Floppy drive. I have an ISO of the 7.6 install CD. I'll try that first.

2011, March 15 - 8:20am

(Reply to #5) #6

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

I have used CDBurnerXP in the past but now prefer ImgBurn for burning Mac HFS ISOs to CD and Writing Mac HFS CD to ISO. Super easy to use and more important; No coasters created since moving to ImgBurn... YMMV

2011, March 15 - 9:18am

24bit

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Joined: 2010 Nov 19

rpangrazio, I am a bit puzzled, a Centris 650 with USB? Never heard about that.
But I would like to second MikeTomTom, ImgBurn does a perfect job and is brain dead simple to use for imaging Mac HFS CDs.

2011, March 15 - 12:13pm

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

The USB floppy is for my pc so I can make the disks.

2011, March 15 - 1:09pm

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

Well I tried a 7.6 install CD as well as the Apple Legacy Software CD, both burned with ImgBurn and both had the same result. I am begining to think that the problem might be my drive. I'll make some 7.1 install floppies and see if I can get the machine to recognize the drive once Mac OS is booted. Is it possible to have a CD drive that the OS can use but can't be used to boot?

Regardless of any of that, I really appreciate the help. That's one thing I particularly enjoy about this community.

BTW 24bit, if you know how to write Classic drivers, I can build a USB adapter for NU Bus. That would be pretty wicked.

2011, March 15 - 3:50pm

#10

rpangrazio

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And now the plot thickens. I found a disk image of the OS 8 install floppy. I thought I would give that a go just to see if it would use the CD drive. It didn't. As an accident I rebooted and the machine booted into A/UX. I inserted the Apple Legacy Software disk and low and behold it can read it. So now I have very strong suspicions that the drive can't be used to boot.

2011, March 15 - 6:56pm

#11

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

I think I can now put this to bed. I replaced the Apple CD ROM enabler with the Sunrise general cd rom driver. It recognized the drive and I am now using it to install OS 7.6.1 from an iso I had before. I have a strong feeling when its done I will be able to read the other cd's as well.

So the long of the short of it is that the drive is not compatible with my mac as a boot device.

Again, thanks for all the help.

2011, March 16 - 6:09am

(Reply to #11) #12

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

@rpangrazio noted:

So the long of the short of it is that the drive is not compatible with my mac as a boot device.

Perhaps, but others have been able to use this cd rom drive on other Macs as a boot device. One example I came across was an xlr8yourmac entry where someone is reporting it as booting his PPC (not a '040 650, I know) from an 8.5 install CD:

Reviewer's Name: John Wood
Date Submitted: 10/16/2000
Drive Type: CD-ROM
Drive Interface: SCSI
Drive Brand: Toshiba
Drive Model Number: XM-6201B 32x
Drive Size: N/A
Driver Used: Apple Standard
Mac Model: 7300-7500-7600
Mac OS Version: 8.6
Reader Comments: This Toshiba 32X SCSI CDROM is bootable from the mac os 8.5 CD. I was amazed by this drive. I got it off of ebay, and I dobted its compatibility with my mac. Installation was effortless, it hooked right into the SCSI cable. If you buy this drive you will need a special audio cable, available from OWC. I would recomend this drive to anyone. I am very pleased!

To find this post at xlr8yourmac you need to go through the "database of working on the Mac cd/etc drives" which unfortunately is a "lasso" search form and you can't copy and paste the result page's link directly. However on the search page, enter only the model number of the drive (XM-6201B) leaving the other fields blank and you should get to the right page.

I seem to recall (its been years since I owned a 650 Mac) that I once hacked the Mac CD-ROM driver in ResEdit to get it to recognize a non-standard CD drive, I just needed to add its name to a list of acceptable drives in a resource fork of the driver. There may be hope for this yet?

2011, March 16 - 1:13pm

#13

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

It works fine, once mac os is booted. I used it to install OS 7.6 yesterday. I'll look into the model that was used to install 8.6 with. There might be something more going on here, either with the user above or with my mac/drive in particular.

It should be noted that the crash is instantaneous. The computer checks all drives, then tries to boot from the cd. No happy mac no nothing, just straight to the sad mac screen.

2011, March 16 - 1:14pm

#14

SwedeBear

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Joined: 2009 Apr 18

Just busting into this: if the internal CD-ROM is the only device on that SCSI-chain, it should be terminated. Also check that the ID isn´t clashing with the disk or anything else SCSI connected.

All this from a distance of all my SCSI things at the mo´, so no tests done.

2011, March 16 - 2:48pm

#15

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

Its got an HD at id 6 the CD drive at id 5. The HD is the last on the string and it is terminated. Not bad things to check though.

2011, March 22 - 12:51am

(Reply to #15) #16

MikeTomTom

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@rpangrazio noted earlier:

Its got an HD at id 6 the CD drive at id 5. The HD is the last on the string and it is terminated.

IIRC, Macs with internal CD players fresh from the factory would have as default internal SCSI chain:
internal HD: ID 0
internal CD ROM drive: ID3
Macintosh: ID 7

I don't know if it makes a difference having ID 6 and 5 as in your current setup. The internal chain needed to be terminated at both the motherboard end and on the last device in the chain. Yours must be terminated at the motherboard end too, else I don't think anything would be working correctly.

2011, March 16 - 3:12pm

#17

rpangrazio

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I went and checked out the xlr8yourmac website and found a lot of people using the drive. Unfortunately they were all PPC's and I don't know if it helps. It also seems that everybody uses hacked drivers for it. I am wondering if the problem is that it doesn't have a driver on the boot cd to use it.

2011, March 16 - 8:34pm

#18

SwedeBear

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Joined: 2009 Apr 18

The disk and CD-Rom share SCSI-chain/-string, correct? In that case I guess your thought of lacking drive setup is a good one. Here´s a page dealing with this problem and some more links;
http://chrislawson.net/writing/macdaniel/2k1130cl.shtml
Still relocated w/o possibility to test my findings.

Edit: the ResExcellence link is outdated.. Here´s the link to the actual page;
http://www.resexcellence.com/mods_classic/12-21-1998.shtml
Edit2: outdated seems to be the family name of the page I linked to first. :/ Here´s some real drivers to check out; http://www.macdrivermuseum.net/disk.shtml
(phew)

2011, March 16 - 9:14pm

#19

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

I'll look into the drivers. I wonder if I inserted a driver that recognized the cdrom into one of the cd rom images if it would work

BTW. I don't understand this.

"In that case I guess your thought of lacking drive setup is a good one."

Had a few doctors appointments today so I might not be at my mental best.

2011, March 18 - 4:36am

(Reply to #18) #20

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

@rpangrazio: I found (99.9% certain) the ResEdit Hack to get Apple's CD driver to recognize any CD ROM drive. I couldn't have found it without the help of the Wayback machine. Man what a useful resource that can be. Requires "Apple CD-ROM 5.4.2" or later - it may also work on earlier CD-ROM drivers but the instructions are clear for the versioned mention on this page.

I also recall that one of Apple's CD-ROM drivers (5.3.1) works with just about any CD drive without hacking. It can be found here at the Mac Driver Museum, look for the "Apple's Universal CD ROM Driver 5.3.1 (60 k)" link.

Good Luck.

2011, March 19 - 8:30pm

(Reply to #18) #21

SwedeBear

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Joined: 2009 Apr 18

With my writing I guess I should have a few appointments too. What I meant was that if the hard disk and the CD-ROM is on the same SCSI-chain/-string your thoughts seems reasonable/logical to me.

2011, March 21 - 12:27pm

#22

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

Ahh yes. It is true that they are on the same scsi chain.

I think my next steps are going to be the following. I am going to modify the Apple CDROM driver. Then I am going to build a custom boot cdrom and see if I can boot that.

2011, March 25 - 8:11pm

#23

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

Just to be clear, I am going to put what the current status of this issue is

-Every Attempt to boot from a Toshiba XM-6201B, results in a Bad Instruction Sad Mac.
-I have tried burned CD's of an Apple Legacy Restore CD, as well as Mac OS 7.6 install
-I have also tried to boot a production made Symantic Tools CD.
-I am able to boot from a floppy with the CD Sunrise extension and read HFS CDs.
-I have installed Mac OS 7.6 as well as A/UX 3 using the CD Sunrise Extension on a boot floppy
-The internal HD is SCSI ID 6 and the CD is SCSI ID 5. The HD is at the end of the chain and is terminated.

I have three steps to perform.
1. Move my drives to the factory setup of HD at ID 0 and CD at ID 3
2. Create a custom boot CD that has the modified apple CD-ROM extension on it.
3. Verify that the Mother Board is supplying termination.

Right now I have a working machine, and am extremely grateful for the help. I am going to continue to trouble shoot this problem till I either exhaust all ideas or get a successful boot. I want to do this because I find that every time I have a problem like this I find a bunch of threads on various forums that don't ever find a solution, just a work around that doesn't work for me. So I guess I am going to keep working at it for posterity's sake. I'll keep updating as more information arrives.

2011, March 25 - 10:09pm

#24

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

I am sorry I am being retarded, its a Norton Utilities 3.5 cd.

2011, March 26 - 1:05am

#25

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

MikeTomTom you are now my hero. If you hadn't have suggested I change the SCSI id's. I would not have opened my case and found every component in there roasting hot. I almost lost my mac. I think the PSU fan died. I'll replace that and install a second one.

Thank you very much.

2011, March 27 - 4:53am

#26

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

@rpangrazio: You were lucky! Just as well you decided to open the case (in time). Hope all is well from now on.

Cheers.

2011, March 29 - 11:37am

#27

rpangrazio

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Joined: 2009 Aug 27

As soon as I get back and replace the fans, I think it will cool down dramatically. I hate adding a second fan and its noise, but I'd rather have a loud mac than a dead one.