[beverson]

A friend of mine is trying to get iTunes to work with his Que! SCSI external CD-RW drive. From what I understand, it uses a Richo mechanism (Ricoh RW7060S) that seems to be among the unsupported mechanisms.

Does anyone know of a hack for getting unsupported drives to work? Or at the very least, why certain drives are unsupported?

[chris5]

Yes - there is a work around (hack) to get scsi cdr/rw to work w/ itunes. After combining through forums there was this little post about how to do it. It wasn't very detailed but I got the gist of it and got it work. I'll try to explain how to do it step by step.

Applications you will need - a hex editor (I recommend BrainHex 1.1 - you can find it at http://www.versiontracker.com ) and cd-rom driver. Apple's cd/dvd driver that comes w/ itunes will not work w/ scsi drives. I've have good luck w/ Radialogic CD Master ATA/SCSI (if you have it or can find it) and CharisMac Discribe CD-Rom v1.58 (you can get it off charismac site through their discribe demo). The Toast CD Reader extension will not work w/ itunes.

Step 1 - Assuming that you already have itunes 1.1 and have installed it. Go into the system folder and then to the extensions folder. Inside the extensions folder there is a folder named Authoring Support Files. In that folder there is a plug-in named Ricoh CDR.

Step 2 - Make a copy of that plug-in (Ricoh CDR) and open it w/ a hex editor (resedit won't work). Once open look for line - CD-R/RW RW8040A.cd-r.ricoh - change the 8040A to 7060S. That's all you have to do to the plug-in. Save the changes and quit out of the hex editor.

Step 3 - Take the plug-in you have just changed and replace the Ricoh CDR in the Authoring Support Files folder.

Step 4 - Put a CD-Rom driver (other than apple's cd/dvd or toast's cd reader) in the the extensions folder.

Step 5 - Restart your computer. Launch Itunes then goto the edit menu. Select preferences from there click the advanced tab if all went well you should see your cd burner.

If you use Toast not to worry the two cd driver extensions that I list here work fine. I haven't had any problems burning w/ itunes or toast. If you have any questions just post a message here.

Good Luck!

Hi (I'm the friend). I tried what you said and altered the driver coding without a problem. However it still doesn't seem to work. I got rid of the Apple and Toast extensions and replaced them with the Radialogic extension. No dice.

Also, when I go to the iTunes preferences it doesn't even search for supported drives - it just says "no supported drives found." Is that normal?

Any other suggestions are welcomed.

[chris5]

O.K. - Are you sure that your Que! scsi cdr/rw is using a Ricoh mechanism (7060S). I am using a Ricoh 7060s internal drive and after doing this hack it showed up in the advanced tab. That's the only thing I can think of that's not right (the drive not being 7060s). If you want to use the hacked Ricoh CDR plug-in that I'm using. I put it in my public folder in Apples iDisk. Just send me an e-mail and I'll e-mail you the URL.

[chris5]

Sorry about that.........there's my e-mail.