pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

  • He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.



pendell
@pendell

I recently bought this drive off eBay for about $45, and it arrived today. It was extremely well packaged and protected, but when I connected it to my IDE to USB adapter, it showed little to no signs of life. The tray simply jerks back and forth a few millimeters when you press the eject button.

It's so frustrating because you can tell this drive is close to being functional, but there's something holding it back. These tray-loading DVD-RAM drives are getting harder and harder to come by these days and I'd like to get this example working if I can, so I appeal to tech nerds here and elsewhere to posit solutions to try, especially if you've had experience with this before.... I'm first going to try connecting this to an actual PC with IDE and Molex connections, since it's entirely possible it's the Chinese adapter I'm using that's causing the issue. Will update accordingly.


pendell
@pendell

It wasn't the drive that was the problem. It was the USB adapter I was plugging it into. I dug out an eMachine I had lying around and swapped its drive for the Panasonic. It ejected immediately with no fuss. At first it was spitting out DVD-RAM cartridges, but eventually it started reading them just fine. My journey is documented in the two videos below:

Realizing that my adapter was what was at fault makes me feel really bad, as I've thrown away THREE separate optical drives that refused to respond when connected to it... So I probably threw away 3 perfectly good working drives. Luckily those ones weren't rare drives, just HP DVD-/+RW SATA drives that are thick on the ground. Still...

I'd like to get a better IDE to USB adapter. Preferably, if I can, an external 5.25" enclosure that will let me use this DVD-RAM drive like an external USB drive. I think that would be cool. Does anyone know of a good reliable product like this?


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