Since I think this is the place where I found out how to install a new HD into my 333mhz iMac, I figured it would be a good place to check on the next project I want to do. Can anybody with some experience tell me if this is likely to work?

My USB CD-RW just quit on me because of a damaged cord (the Sony Spressa has a really lousy connection cord!) and since they want $50 to replace the cord, I'm looking for other options.

I've noticed the availability of $100 internal ATA (IDE ... whatever they are) IBM drives, and I was wondering, since the iMac can use pretty much any regular hard drive, what the chances might be for replacing the iMac CD-R with a more powerful CD-RW ... either in-case, if it would fit (the main part I wonder about would be the drive door) or externally, with the cable just running inside to connect.

I hope I've been clear enough here ... if not, feel free to ask questions.

As I say, I've already replaced the HD, so opening things up to get to the CD-R is a piece of cake for me. Just wondering if this would work, and how likely Toast, Mac's CD player, and things like that are to work with different ATA CD-RWs.

Can anyone help me with info or thoughts?

Jon

[TimmyDee51]

The problem with the iMac CD-ROM is that it is not just ATA, its ATAPI and its a laptop drive. You could slave it to the HD, but then you have the space problems. Hence the non-power tray. As far as I know, only one CD-R has ever been made to fit the iMac, and that's the PowerCRD. I don't know which company made it, but that's a moot point since they don't any more. Check out the iMac forum, there's a thread right now about the PowerCDR or whatever its called.

Yeah, I realised that a replacement drive wasn't likely to fit in the spot of the original, but I figured if there was a simple way to have the new drive sitting on the table next to the iMac, with the wire running inside, it might not look pretty, but it might very well work.

(Besides ... with computer guts overflowing the table, won't I look like much more of a hardware hacker than I actually am? Next I'm considering the fiber optic glowing effects people started talking about in that mouse modification topic! <ggg> )

Speaking of modifications ... this isn't anything I really know anything about, but replacing that hard drive wasn't too hard, so I might as well ask ... people are talking about slaving drives to the HD ... if you had the right cables (and no, I don't know what they are, I'd eventually have to ask), could you hook up more than one single HD and one single CD-R to the 'device bus' (I'm outside my knowledge here), or is the reason there is no indicatin of extra places to hook things up directly MORE than just a matter of limited space inside the iMac?

(What can I say, I seem to have been somewhat bitten by the hardware bug!)

Jon

[try]

Hey,
I did what you are suggesting, with an Imac DV SE 400. The wires run out to my externally placed internal cdrw. Sure it looks ugly but it works. As the Imac DV uses a different connection (50 pins) I had to cut some wires. TThe audio cd don't play that well any more via atapi, (stutter with a lot of harddisk activitiy) as I also had to cut the digital audioconnectors connecting to the motherboard. If I had known the pinlayout of the remaining ten pins I would have linked the digital audio coming from the drive . All this is of course of no concern to you as you have an older imac which I think has the standard 40 pins connector. But I just wanted you to know. I don't think you will find any troubles doing what you want. Just make sure you buy a cd which is bootable. Check the drive database on http://www.xlr8yourmac.com


Paul

Ooh read your post on the imac forum.. You also have a 50 pin connection on your imac.. so the same accounts for you.

[This message has been edited by try (edited 12-06-2000).]

[try]

Oh and about your second question. The imac only has one atapi connector which by standard supports one master and one slave unit. IE your hard disk and your cd-r(w). So u can't add more units.

That's what I would have thought on the number of items you could hook up, but it wasn't what I seemed to be readin in the posts in here ... so I was starting to hope I'd get to add other items eventually.

On the 50pin thing, I haven't actually counted them ... I was just reading the other comments in here. I don't know at what point they started or stopped using the 50 pin items. If you know details on that, I've got one of the 333mhz iMacs

So deos this mean I'll have to replace the CD unit with the new CD-RW whether it uses the 40 or 50 pin. Oh well, things will work out eventually!

Jon

[rambo47]

I'm toying with the idea of adding a CD-RW to my iMac. It's really a second computer for me: the price was right. $0. I'm thinking about an external unit like Yamaha's 8824 and using one of those iMac stands that gives you 3 inches of storage space right under the computer. Not as elegant as a new internal unit, but much easier.

------------------
-bo47

"There is no spoon."
iDisk: rseijas
Homepage: homepage.mac.com/rseijas

[try]

Don't know what you mean with your last remark footprints, but I am not totally sober anymore., so that might be it. To me it seems you have the same situation as I have. I can put a pic online to let you see how things look here, or if you have any other questions, please ask.

Cheers Paul

[This message has been edited by try (edited 12-08-2000).]

Oh crud!

Just opened it up & I have the 50 pin CD unit in my iMac. Which means unless there is a way to slave a second drive directly to the HD (I don't know ... I don't know much on any of these things) I'll have to find a way to adapt a 50pin IDE wire to a 40pin IDE device.

And since that kind of thing is not my strong point (too 'mechanical' for me), I'll need photos and advice and probably liberal amounts of alcohol before I'll touch it. Unscrew, remove, replace with same kind of unit and screw back in is about the limit of what I feel comfortable with! So this won't be something I'll get done today, like I'd hoped! (Just got my check sand best buy has a philips drive for $99 so I'd have gotten that.)

Or by any chance, does anybody make some sort of 50 to 40pin cable out there in the 'real' world?

(I know ... I know ... the iMac wasn't -designed- to be expandable!)

Jon

[This message has been edited by footprints (edited 12-08-2000).]

[ibookuser2]

You should be able to get a new cable with two connectors on it to use in your iMac, plugging one into the HD and running the other out of the case to the drive... one thing you may need to think about is a power supply, it won't just draw current outta thin air...

This is really off topic, but its kinda cool...
If ya wanna hook up a lot of internal devices externally u need scsi. Back when my quadra 700 was my main machine I built a box that had a huge custom power supply (enough for 14 drives) 12 internal SCSI connectors, and power connectors for all of the drives. It plugged into the Quadra's SCSI bus and an extra SCSI card and I ran 10 different drives off of the thing to make about a 2 gig software raid array, as well as a half-broken CD-ROM drive which needed to be shaken occasionally and run on its side. I had all thirteen peripherals spread all over my worksurface. It looked pretty cool, and everyone was in awe over how I had a 2gig drive on my mac back then.
Ribbon cables everywhere!!!

footprints,

You never say which cable is damaged on the burner. I have the same model as you, and you could avoid the headache and the extra cash on this internal by letting me know what kind of cord. If it's either the power cord or the USB cord (both of which are readily available a hell'a cheaper then 50 bucks) I'm sure I could locate one for you.

-spambeard@mac.com

[Steph]

On the subject of the 50pin to 40pin wires... maybe this is helpful, maybe not. I have a Strawberry iMac DV 400MHz. I have on occasion disconnected the DVD and used a 2nd hard disk instead. For those occasions I 'adapted' a 40 pin IDE ribon cable for the job.

Basicaly it is a standard 18" IDE ribbon cable with three 40pin connectors. The one you plan on plugging into the iMac motherboard, you just take a sharp x-acto knife, and carefully trim off the plastic on the very end. Without looking at it, I can't remember if you trim the pin-1 end or the pin-40 end...I think it's the pin-40 end. Anyhow, you shave it down till it will fit, now it covers the 40 pins it needs to, and doesn't bend or interfere with the 10 pins you don't need. The other two connectors don't need to be touched, they just plug into the hard drive or cd-rw drive as normal. You can set the original cable aside without destroying it, for when you may need it later.

Oh, and of course for power, I used a 'Y' power adaptor to supply the voltage to the 2nd unit... among those extra 10 pins on the 'ide' are not just digital audio, but power.

Just my 2cents!

--Stephanie

[try]

This was exactly what I wanted to say last time when I was not sober enough to clarify myself. This is what I did with my computer. I cut off the end on the 40 pin end with a sharp knife and used and y splitter for the power supply

[kokosnootje]

I think we are now getting there in figuring out that 50 pin cable.
Is there anybody who knows which wires of the 10 extra wires are power and audio etc.
I know that the person to come out first with a diagram would make a lot of people very happy.

[Bockie]

Yes, many, many people.

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

All,

I'm glad to hear people are having success with this! As of Friday (payday!) I'll be buying a new ata hd, and following the information I'm picking up in here to wire it into my iMac.

But as I am still new at this kind of thing, I will ask if anybody's got any photos of the stuff! (Hey, no harm in asking.)

Jon

[try]

Hey footprints,

about your other question about connectiong more than 2 devices to your imac. It seems it can be done very soon. I just saw this url on the macnn.com mainpage. http://www.duplidisk.com/osx.htm.
Check this out. I am very interested I guess you too. According to the specs of the pc version, it supports up to 4 devices. Sounds pretty good to me. But expensive though, over $200 for the pc version.

I hope people are still reading this ... I have a new problem! (Sorry.)

I bought the IDE CD-RW today, along with the power and IDE cables ... but when I went into my iMac, things got weird!

My iMac does not have a three-way cable hooking up the HD and the CDR to the motherboard ... the motherboard has -two- sockets on it, one with 50 pins and one with 40 pins. It has two entirely separate cables, one 50 to 50 for the CDR and one 40 to 40 for the HD.

From one side, this brings me back to an earlier question ... since there are two (entirely?) separate connections for the machine, instead of both devices being hooked up to a single one, might I be able to keep the CDR in place, and just add the second 40 pin device to the HD, and end up with three working devices?

From another, it solves a problem ... since the 40 pin device hooks up to a 40 pin socket, no need to do any cutting to make it fit on a 50 pin socket.

From a third side ... the IDE cable that I bought seems to be a very standard cable ... it looks pretty much like any other IDE cable I've ever seen ... one end, about six inches of cable, the middle connector, about 12 inches of cable, and the final connector. Problem is, the six inch side (short side) is a little shorter than the original cable, and can't fit from the motherboard to the HD. If I use the long end, it is obviously long enough, but then the short end isn't long enough to reach outside the Mac to connect to another device! I realize this is pretty much the standard cable, but are there non-standard versions out there, so I can get the length I need?

Anybody still reading this rambling nonsense? Any comments or advice?

Jon

Progress report:

Bought about 26 inches of 40 pin ribbon cable and some connectors today, and made my own IDE cable, several inches longer than the usual one.
Unfortunately, I positioned one connector wrong and punctured my cable, then had to move the connector.

Hooked all the wires up, crammed the CDR back in (difficult because of the extra wires), pushed it all back into the iMac (even more difficult because of all the extra wires), and set things up.

First thing I discovered ... things are now too tight for the regular CDR to actually eject, so I don't get to use it for the moment. But my hard drive still works fine, Apple recognizes the Acer drive with Profiler, Toast recognized it once I upgraded to 4.1.2, and disks placed in the CD-RW actually appear on the desktop, which didn't happen with my USB drive.

It seemed I could read from the drive just fine, then I went to write a disk. First couple of times I tried to write one, instantly it would run into errors, before it even got anything written. Finally, it wrote an entire disk, but then it came up with an error instantly when verifying. I opened the disk and pulled a couple of mp3 files off it and tried listening to them, and they were horrible. Static and other unexpected and unwelcome sounds constantly on it. Same with an old disk I knew was all right. Downloaded a program from a past CD, tried to open it, and it crashed the computer. Seems the drive was getting a good percentage of gibberish every time it tried to read or write.

I made a guess it was because of that cable I'd nailed in the wrong place (or perhaps the longer cable length ... that can affect things once in a while, though I hope not on IDE cables!), so took the computer apart again, and went back to the original (standard) cable I'd bought, and hooked both drives up with that one. Now the connection is -very- tight, because only about 1 1/2 inches of the cable sticks out of the back of the machine.

Tried the thing again with old disks, and it now reads them fine. Songs come through very clear, with no extra, unwanted sounds. Programs come through as programs, rather than gibberish.

But for some reason, it still can't -write- CDs. Runs into errors. I'm hoping maybe it is because of the extremely tight connection, so Monday I'll go out and buy more cable and more connectors, and try to make another IDE cable, this time only two inches longer than the regular ones, and without making a mistake on connector placement.

But in the meantime, anybody have any other advice on all this? Any idea why (other than drive defect, which I'll hope against, but not count on until I see it) a CD-RW might read disks fine, but not be able to write them?

Any other advice and/or comments on the whole thing?

Jon

[try]

Hmm.. I really can't help you on this one I guess. Did you check the compability on www.xlr8yourmac.com for this drive?
Further If you have 2 Atapi connectors you seem to be a lucky person... I wished I had.

Paul

Paul & any others still reading this:

Just a word to let you know, I've had complete success with the CD-RW installation, just didn't realize it at first.

After trying a few different disks, I eventually realized the Acer burner won't write to green-tinted CDs, though it seems to read them just fine. So I went out and bought some blue-tinted CDs, and everything works fine now!

I couldn't have done it without the help and information I got in here, though, so thanks, all!!!!!

Jon

I have an iMac 233 (Rev A, tray loading CD) and a Freecom Traveller USB CD-RW (FC-TRW-4420). For kicks I took the case of the CD-RW apart since I assumed that all it contained was a "something"-to-ATAPI Bridge ("something" b/c one can also connect a FW, Parallel Port or PC Card cable to the drive).

The CD-RW drive itself is Toshiba make (forget which one exactly, 4xW,4xRW,20xR) and has the same connector as the CD drive in the iMac. It features the same measurements, mechanisms as the iMac CD drive. Tray cover on the front is plastic stuck on with glue, so it could be replaced with something fitting the iMac form factor.

Upshot:

Installation was as easy or difficult as putting anything else in an iMac (RAM, HD, mezzanine cards). The plastic tray cover on the Freecom drive was smaller than the iMac counterpart so it did fit through the slot.

No problems booting up, read CDs like a charm. Burning CDs was a problem. Toast (4.1 deluxe) would recognize the drive but give one of its more cryptic errors almost right after writing had started. Toast may have been a factor in this, since the drive only worked reliably back in its external case after upgrading to 4.1.2 which came out a few weeks after my experiment.

For what it's worth. Oh yeah, the Freecom is about $400-500.

[scaught]

i realize you probably are more interested in modding a mac to fit in your car, but they make in-dash recievers that can play a CD of mp3s as well as normal CDs and whatnot. i saw some in the crutchfield catalog.

scott

[Evinyatar]

When I still had my iMac I had a second HD hanging out of it in what seems the same way you have yours. I experienced lots of errors when writing/reading data from it tho. Then I realized the IDE cable isn't shielded at all, so I wrapped it in aluminium foil and connected that to the metal casing of both the HD and the iMac. Then I wrapped the cable in plastic foil and all was well. Just in case you start experiencing oddness.