This is going to sound real stupid, especially coming from a guy that has supported Macs for over 10 years, builds Mac servers regularly, is a Unix admin, and usually solves these problems without a second thought.

I have a 7600/132 with a G3 processor upgrade running MacOS 9.0.4 and 80MB of memory. I was burning audio CD's this weekend using Toast 3.5.7 when all of a sudden my internal CD-ROM a 8x CD-ROM reader from Apple, skips every 2 sec during playback. What have I done and how do I fix it? I have already thrown out the the Apple AudioCD prefs, but have not zapped the PRAM.


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Life is an intelligence test...Don't Fail.

[MacOS761]

1) Don't bang your desk with your fist. That's not good for CD-ROM drives, which have little/no skip protection.

2) Make sure the drive is parallel to the ground. They don't work well vertically.

----Okay, joke's over----

Really, try starting up with Extensions off. PRAM zapping is unlikely to help, but may be worth a try if Extensions don't do it. If turning off Extensions helps, narrow it down to the perpetrator... does Toast install one? I dunno, but if it does, that's prolly it.
BTW, I hope you didn't spend too much time entering the names of CD tracks, b/c it sounds like you just trashed all of those (if you use a CDDB untility, you're fine). Good luck!

Really, try starting up with Extensions off. PRAM zapping is unlikely to help, but may be worth a try if Extensions don't do it. If turning off Extensions helps, narrow it down to the perpetrator... does Toast install one? I dunno, but if it does, that's prolly it.

Checked that. Doesn't do any good. The Toast extension is strictly for the external SCSI burner so it can be used in addition to the internal CD-ROM. Without the extension the burner acts only as a burner and can only be used via Toast.

BTW, I hope you didn't spend too much time entering the names of CD tracks, b/c it sounds like you just trashed all of those (if you use a CDDB untility, you're fine). Good luck!

That is the least of my worries. I might not have explained the problem correctly. It doesn't skip per say but plays for 2 seconds, stops for a second and then continues repeatedly. This is true for any audio CD. It happened after crashing while ripping the AIFF from an audio CD for mastering a custom audio CD.

BTW, thank you for the joke and the reality check.

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Life is an intelligence test...Don't Fail.

[This message has been edited by Crazy K (edited 06-01-2000).]

[MacOS761]

You're very welcome! You're stretching the bounds of my expertise here, but when you have a crash, there is always a chance of screwing up the system file. I assume you meant a system crash, right? Anyway, if the system file is screwed, especially while it was working on reading from the CD, you may have to reinstall the OS. It's really, REALLY rare that a crash actually does that kind of damage, but I can't rule it out.
Before you try something as drastic as that, try trashing the System prefs. The Finder prefs prolly have nothing to do with it, but you could try that, too, in a pinch. Those two prefs files make the strangest problems when they get messed up.
Anyway, that's about the extent of my knowledge about such things, so I hope it works!

[reader50]

It sounds like you Mac is running something heavy in the background and not returning to the CD often enough. You might check to see if Seti@Home is running as an application in the background, or if some practical joker has slipped something into you Startup Items folder. You could also check network settings. If your Mac is a stand-alone, but thinks it is on a network, it may be wasting time looking for servers.

Originally posted by reader50:
It sounds like you Mac is running something heavy in the background and not returning to the CD often enough. You might check to see if Seti@Home is running as an application in the background, or if some practical joker has slipped something into you Startup Items folder. You could also check network settings. If your Mac is a stand-alone, but thinks it is on a network, it may be wasting time looking for servers.

None of those are true. I am going to be working on it pretty heavily this weekend; I will let you know what works and what does not.

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Life is an intelligence test...Don't Fail.

[reader50]

Some further thoughts ...
You did not mention if the CD will still read CD-Roms normally, or boot from CD in a normal amount of time (or at all). If it refuses to boot from the CD drive, that would suggest a hardware fault in the drive, it could be losing track of it's location every few seconds.
Try Memory Mapper (or other utility) to see what background processes are running. The "DVD Autolauncher", for example, could be trying to claim the CD if it were installed and it's prefs were screwed up.
Also, Quicktime has preference settings for CD-Rom autolaunching & CD - audio autoplay. The Quicktime prefs file could be what you are looking for.
Hope these suggestions help.

[This message has been edited by reader50 (edited 06-03-2000).]

[reader50]

Ah ha ... check to see if your system has been sitting too close to a pc system. I don't remember what the critical distance is, but someone here should know.

Originally posted by reader50:
Some further thoughts ...
You did not mention if the CD will still read CD-Roms normally, or boot from CD in a normal amount of time (or at all).

Actually it reads CD-ROM's fine with no trouble. I have great performance in any data related application, it just will not play CD's correctly.

RE: distance to a Windoze machine. The other room across the hall. My Machine lives in a Windoze free environment.

Ihave a suggestion, put the CD/DVD Extension in the extensions disabled folder; then replace it with the CD Extension from 8.5 or older.

What brand and model of CD-R/RW did you use when you recorded your audio CDs? It may have some compatability issues with your version of Toast.

Also, with my experience, my old version of Toast 3.5.x started messing up once the year 2000 rolled around, especially when I was burning audio CDs. You may want to upgrade to version 4.0 or 4.1.

I have a Power Center Pro 210, OS 8.6, Teac CD-R56S4, and Toast 4.1.

Originally posted by jazzy e:
What brand and model of CD-R/RW did you use when you recorded your audio CDs? It may have some compatability issues with your version of Toast.

It is the original 8x from Apple. I foget the model number but it is a Matushita (Panasonic) mechanism. As far as I know there are no recording incompatibilities with Toast and that drive. But that is no the issue. Just playback of Audio cd's are the problem.

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Life is an intelligence test...Don't Fail.

Crazy K... Let me get this straight: you have an Apple 8x CD-Rom drive that doesn't read an audio CD made from another CD-R/RW with Toast 3.5.x. Is this recorder also hooked up to your 7600, or is it with another computer? Have you tried using the suspect audio CD with another CD-Rom or -R/RW drive?

I still think that you need to upgrade to Toast 4.x if the audio CD also skips with another CD-Rom drive (other than the one in your 7600). I also doubt if any old version of Toast works well with OS9.x. What I'm trying to say is that your CD-R/RW may have recorded the audio CD in a manner that the Apple CD-Rom drive (an old one at that) could not read clearly, and there's a chance that it's caused by software related conflicts with the recorder. I'm still curious, what is the brand/mechanism of recorder do you have/did you use?

Two more thoughts: you may simply have had a bad CD-R disk, and just burn another copy (try it at a slow record speed, like 2x), or you may want to try CD/DVD-ROM SpeedTools from Intech as your driver for both the internal CD-Rom and CD-R/RW drives. It works great with my computer. I hope my input helps.

Originally posted by jazzy e:
Crazy K... Let me get this straight: you have an Apple 8x CD-Rom drive that doesn't read an audio CD made from another CD-R/RW with Toast 3.5.x. Is this recorder also hooked up to your 7600, or is it with another computer? Have you tried using the suspect audio CD with another CD-Rom or -R/RW drive?

I still think that you need to upgrade to Toast 4.x if the audio CD also skips with another CD-Rom drive (other than the one in your 7600). I also doubt if any old version of Toast works well with OS9.x. What I'm trying to say is that your CD-R/RW may have recorded the audio CD in a manner that the Apple CD-Rom drive (an old one at that) could not read clearly, and there's a chance that it's caused by software related conflicts with the recorder. I'm still curious, what is the brand/mechanism of recorder do you have/did you use?

The audio CD I burned plays fine in almost all other CD players I have tried. Works fine in my Windoze machine at work, my car CD player, my home CD changer, my DVD player, but not in my brother's car CD player, it exhibited the same problem. I think it was a media incompatibility in his player.

Originally posted by jazzy e:
Two more thoughts: you may simply have had a bad CD-R disk, and just burn another copy (try it at a slow record speed, like 2x), or you may want to try CD/DVD-ROM SpeedTools from Intech as your driver for both the internal CD-Rom and CD-R/RW drives. It works great with my computer. I hope my input helps.

As can be evidenced by my explanation above, the burn is not bad and neither is the media. I have fixed the problem now. I removed all of the preferences related to CD audio playback and now it is fine. Thank you to everyone for your input and suggestions.


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Life is an intelligence test...Don't Fail.

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