I know this question has been asked a number of times, but even after scouring the archives, not all of my concerns have been addressed. I've also found some conflicting claims that I'd like resolved. Perhaps with this post, the issue can be put to rest once and for all.
I have a Power Mac 8600/300, and I'd like to replace the internal SCSI CD-ROM drive with a CDR drive. I understand that there are some issues with booting CDs with an internal CDR drive. Basically, it boils down to the Apple CD-ROM drivers on the CD do not recognizing the CDR drive. However, I did come across this one post back in Sep 1999 that appears to contradict what most people are saying:
"Actually, you can. I just tested it. I reached into my CD drawer and grabbed the first bootable CD I came to, which happened to be a factory made Mac OS 8 CD which I bought retail at CompUSA. Stuck it in the drive, designated it as the boot disk and booted from it. I also burned a bootable CD-RW with OS 8.6 and that worked too."
So I want to summarize all the issues and hopefully get all the facts straight:
Issue #1: Apple's CD-ROM drivers don't recognize non-Apple drives
Most bootable CD's have Apple's CD-ROM drivers on them, and these drivers only work with Apple drives, so external drives and CDR drives are not recognized. This means that when the computer loads the drivers and attempts to boot the device with the driver, the boot fails because the driver says, "Uh, I don't think so.".
Issue #2: Apparently, some CDRs can boot standard bootable CDs.
Based on the comment I quoted above, it appears that it is possible to install an internal SCSI CDR drive and not lose any capabilities. If so, what are these drives? I'd like to buy one.
Issue #3: Pressing "C" during boot, or designating the drive as bootable?
Even if I have a drive that can boot a CD, will I be able to do so simply by pressing "C" when I boot the computer? Because if not, then that means that I need to select a boot device from the control panel, and if all my hard drives have crashed, then I can't do that any more.
Issue #4: Toast uses Apple's driver when it makes a bootable CD.
From what I've read, Toast does not come with its own CD-ROM driver, so it needs to use Apple's. If so, where does it get the driver from? Do I need to have a bootable CD in a CD-ROM drive in order for Toast to get the driver? Wouldn't that mean that I need to have a CD-ROM drive AND a CDR drive to make a bootable CD?
Issue #5: FWB sells a CD-ROM Toolkit that can boot non-Apple CD-ROM drives.
Does this driver work with CDR drives as well? Can I use this driver with Toast to make a bootable CD that can be booted from an internal CDR drive? If so, how?
Issue #6: CDR vs CDRW
As far as I can tell, any limitations that apply to CDR drives also apply to CDRW drives, and vice versa. The only exception would be issue #2, where there may be some CDR drives that have no limitations, but for some reason no one makes a CDRW drive with no limitations.
Issue #7: Which SCSI bus to use?
The internal SCSI bus on an 8600/300 is a "fast" narrow SCSI bus. Most or all internal CDR SCSI drives are wide, which means I need to use a PCI SCSI adapter to control them. Is this true? If so, will it make things even more difficult? Can I still hold down "C" and boot the
drive?
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