Parallel CD ROM

[fmctm1sw]

Ok, how the hell do I use this thing? I'd like to attempt to use it to reload a laptop computer that I can't find real mode drivers for. I can't even figure out how to get it to show up in windows...

[The village idiot]

OH my... You'll have to find some DOS drivers, and boot from a floppy to make it work for an install. And even then I doubt XP or 2000 will be able to use it to load the system. You might need to load win 9X just to be able to load one of the higher versions.

[DVD_Ripper]

Anything on the Mfg site to support your endevour... I have the exact same problem with an old Iomega Parallel Zip Drive... Thank God Iomega has a driver for XP.... otherwise it would be in the trash.... only viable way will be to get drivers from Mfg. If all they have is a Win98, Me, 2k drivers... try 'em out.

[fmctm1sw]

I just discovered that his CD ROM is apparantly from a MAC. Am I screwed? I'm hoping to hook it up to a laptop I have and load my WIN98 O/S....

[snafu099]

Are you sure it is parallel and not 25 pin scsi ?

I have some cables that go parallel to scsi that use a floppy disc utility to detect and then modify autoexec.bat and config.sys file, copy drivers to hdd. utility has to be run each time a change is made in the scsi chain or what is in a box, cd or hdd

I have no idea where you would buy one or if they are still made/supported. I had/have some from Belkin and Adaptic

Pretty obsolete stuff now but worked ok for older laptops w/o cd and no usb

Also have a parallel to ide box that I have never tried. Found it in a close out bin and thought what the heck.

[fmctm1sw]

Are you sure it is parallel and not 25 pin scsi ?

Yeah, it's got the Centronics (?) connector. Like a printer.

[sterno]

If it's an external CD-ROM from a Mac then it's SCSI. Older external SCSI hardware commonly used three different connectors - DB25 (same as a PC parallel port), HD50, and 50-pin Centronics (PC parallel printers use a smaller Centronics). The DB25 was used almost exclusively on the Mac, most PC and UNIX workstation interfaces used HD50, and external devices commonly used the Centronics.

[fmctm1sw]

If it's an external CD-ROM from a Mac then it's SCSI. Older external SCSI hardware commonly used three different connectors - DB25 (same as a PC parallel port), HD50, and 50-pin Centronics (PC parallel printers use a smaller Centronics). The DB25 was used almost exclusively on the Mac, most PC and UNIX workstation interfaces used HD50, and external devices commonly used the Centronics.

Ah, that cleared it up. I saw the connector and just figured it was the same parallel connector that was on my printer. Damn, that makes it pretty much useless to me...

[sterno]

You can probably find some kind of bridge adapter or a PC card to hook a SCSI device to your notebook, but it would probably cost you more than a new CD-ROM.

For what it's worth, a parallel-port CD-ROM would probably also be pretty useless to you. When I was doing a lot of PC support for a school (ancient PC hardware because they couldn't justify the cost of a new PC but they could justify the cost of my time) we had to use a parallel-port CD-ROM to load Windows on a lot of machines. We had to install DOS with the Backpack drivers and run the DOS-based installer from the CD. It would copy the installation files to C: and then reboot to actually start the install.