Howdy,
Right now I am trying to install 8.5 on Wallstreet/PDQ flavor of PB G3. To do this, burned two images downloaded from Macintosh Garden, Mac OS 8.5 Retail and Mac OS 8.5.1 for PDQ. Used Toast 9 under Snow Leopard, the latter recognizes and mounts media perfectly, but as I insert the CD into PowerBook’s optical drive, the laptop tells me he cannot read the disk and prompts for eject/initialize.
So the question is, what I am doing wrong and what is the workaround?
Appreciate your response!
Are you sure the Wallstreet optical drive is working properly?
Immediate ejection is usually a symptom of a non-working drive.
Are you are sure you are burning the disk as an image and not copying a mounted version of the image?
ie you don't want to mount the image when burning. Just select the image and burn.
IT sounds your Wallstreet doesn't have a working OS on it now, but might you have any other bootable media, like an external or internal bay zip drive or a regular scsi hard drive? Any of these boot options would allow you to check to see if your optical drive works, you know?
A much less desirable option would be to swap the internal drive with a bootable hd or take it ot and image it with your OSX Mac, that's only if you happen to have an IDE USB drive enclosure or another compatible Mac to do that on.
Most likely it's a dead CD drive since they tend to fail simply due to ageing, with or without use.
Another issue can be the disc type. Older drives may not be able to read re-writeable discs, but a normal writeable one may work. Even older drives may not even read writeable discs either. Never use dual-layer discs because old drives simply can't read them. Even the brand of disc can be important, so maybe try a different brand (cheap ones tend to be rather useless).
Well, gentlemen, my bad — I finally checked the optical drive with genuine and 100% working Apple Sale Resource Library CD, and it failed as well. Cannot read etc etc. So the culprit was the bloody drive itself. Damn. Now looking for an affordable replacement.
Appreciate everyone's response here anyway. Gracias, pals!
Dead cd drive on g3 pb are pretty common. You can replace the drive with any standard eide cd drive, but not having custom apple fw on it you will lose some functionalities : drive will be slave instead of master and apple hw diagnostic will not boot. Other than that it will work fine. You will also very likely have to glue the tray bezel as it is almost impossible to find a drive with same hooks/screw holes. Look for a drive from late 2000’s, they are more reliable than original drive from late 90’s
Thanks for advise! Think this would be most affordable way to arrange a CD-ROM drive replacement.
Weeell... may I ask for some extra instructions? Looks like Wallstreet's M2451 CD-ROM module utilizes non-stadard flavor of EIDE 50-pin connector split in two sections, so what is the best practice to find and replace the optical drive?
You will have to buy the real deal. Usually a few available on ebay.
I have several spares.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=20x+CD...
I always keep several drives on hand. DVD as well as CD.
But there are usually two or three available at all times on eBay.
Just need to find the best price.
Also have several original 2GB drives in carrier with OS installed.
If you just want to drop in a pre-configured drive,
I convert all my Wallstreets to CF.
(Are you sure the internal HD is good)?
And by the way, you can run a Wallstreet off of a CF card in PCMCIA adapter.
That's how I do all my OS installations now.
Year, I have read about CF switch on LEM back in early 2000s. Think it's a right time to try it old trick eventually. What is your approach? A sort of PATA/CF adapter and a memory card instead of HDD? In this case, could you plese advise me the adaptor brand/model?
These will work in the PCMCIA slots with any CF card.
Bootable or as extra storage.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CompactFlash-SANDISK-TO-PCMCIA-CF-Adapter-ATA-P...
Internally I use something like this - mounted or glued to the standard drive cage.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CF-Card-Compact-Flash-Card-to-2-5-IDE-44Pins-AT...
I do find that for internal use HFS seems to be more stable than HFS+. So I might take a 8GB CF and initialize it as four 2GB HFS volumes. 8.6 on one, 9.2.2, Games, Utilities.
Its not too hard to set those slim line dvd drives to master.
All thats needed is a little bit of wire between pin 45 and 47 of the ATAPI 50 connector.
This German page shows how to do that - last pict above the ATAPI 50 pin out:
http://laptopupdate.de/
Got some of those devices kicking around and could donate one, if the OP is located in Europe.
I don't believe that will work in the Wallstreet. The connection is one of a kind.
Lombard and Pismo are both ATAPI and will work with just about anything.
