Was to put in the cube. It's an Apple CD600i of 95 vintage, and so I have started down a long path of discovery. First of all, I removed the front bezel on the drive (practically ripped it off actually). Then I dismantled the Cube and got the central block out, unscrewed the front 5.25" bezel, and tried to fit the CDROM drive. But no matter which height I screw the CDROM in (various bracket holes at different heights) can I get the cd tray to line up with the hole on the Cube.
So of course I turn myself to the great NeXT community and ask: has anyone managed to add an internal cd drive to a Cube?
All this is leading to an attempt to install OpenStep 4.2 from a VirtualBox install to the Cube, and the plan B is that I do it from CD-ROM, but that would be too easy. I *love* net installing.
(and whilst I play with the Cube's insides, I'm installing/patching win2k (SP4+IE6SP1+91! patches) to get some form of linux on my SGI VSW320 again now I've got a couple spare drives).
Anyone game?
It all sounds good, but one big problem..
Your VB install of openstep, is under the intel builds, not NeXT m86.
Actually since the media is fat binaries for intel/m68k it'll work fine, just like I've been able to netinstall a sparcstation 5 from a VM running under intel (the sparc cd is fat binaries for sparc and hp pa architectures). I'll post a howto this time though since so many people want to do this and net install is so much easier than tracking down scsi drives etc.
While CD players with new convenience features are constantly introduced, the basic function of playing a CD has not changed significantly in 15 years. None of the much hyped 'advancements' such as digital filters, oversampling, one bit D/As, and such are likely to make any difference whatsoever in the listening pleasure of most mortals. The people who care, do so only because they are more concerned with the technology than the musical experience. Most of these so called advances were done at least in part to reduce costs - not necessarily to improve performance.
Therefore, unless you really do need a 250 disc CD changer with a remote control that has more buttons than a B777 cockpit and 2000 track programmability, a 10 year old CD player will sound just as good and repair may not be a bad idea. Many older CD players are built more solidly than those of today. Even some new high-end CD players may be built around a mostly plastic optical deck and flimsy chassis.
If you need to send or take the CD player or CDROM drive to a service center, the repair could easily exceed the cost of a new unit. Service centers may charge up to $50 or more for providing an initial estimate of repair costs but this will usually be credited toward the total cost of the repair (of course, they may just jack this up to compensate for their bench time). Parts costs are often grossly inflated as well - possibly due to a deliberate effort on the part of manufacturers to discourage repair of older equipment. However, these expensive parts do not really fail nearly as often as is commonly believed - the laser is not the most likely component to be bad! Despite this, you may find that even an 'authorized' repair center will want to replace the expensive optical pickup even when this is not needed. I do not know how much of this is due to dishonesty and how much to incompetence.
If you can do the repairs yourself, the equation changes dramatically as your parts costs will be 1/2 to 1/4 of what a professional will charge and of course your time is free. The educational aspects may also be appealing. You will learn a lot in the process. Thus, it may make sense to repair that bedraggled old boombox after all.
Please people, stay on topic. The question here is how do you align the cdrom drive in the Cube so that the caddy can eject through the bracket hole at the front. Anything else should be posted elsewhere.
Quote from: "Noth"Please people, stay on topic. The question here is how do you align the cdrom drive in the Cube so that the caddy can eject through the bracket hole at the front. Anything else should be posted elsewhere.
Mmm, tres, tres Suisse! :P
More seriously, the cube was never intended to house a CD drive internally. Just the MO, hard disks and floppy drives. The large slot bezel is for the MO which is likely a unique layout given its history. So *if* the CD's door, drawer or caddy can exit the bezel, you will still need to fabricate a bracket to bring it into alignment. Measuring a few offsets (slot-to-door, mounting-hole-to-mounting-hole) will give you the numbers you need to modify an existing bracket.
I've never wanted to do this but an external glance suggests this won't work without interesting changes. The MO slot is too short for a drawer-type CD drive but might work with caddy- or slotted-drives. But the slot is offset downwards relative to CD media so you have a problem there. Solutions: slotted CD drive that can be installed upside-down, install bezel upside down and adjust bracket to allow drive to be installed upside-right, cut the bezel opening, or find a very low profile CD drive (I've never seen a SCSI one personally).
Caddy-based drives fit just fine, you just have to use the right set of holes. Maybe your drive cage doesn't have the holes in the right place?
actually it's a tray not a caddy, made the mistake whilst being too tired. Yes apparently the holes don't line up. I'll give it another go (possibly turning it upside down tonight).
*was REALLY tired* on reading that. I see the point... well the CD600e works through the MO slot, just going to need to align the holes.
So, I've been unable to netinstall from a VirtualBox OpenStep 4.2 VM because the config just doesn't work and I've the impression that bootp/tftp traffic is getting dropped.
Instead, I've duplicated with ditto my nextstep3.3 drive and used the new drive to update to OpenStep 4.2 via the cdrom's Updater.app. Very handy. It's still running now but everything looks good. Just have to reassemble the drive cage, but that's going to a metal workshop tomorrow to line up holes for the cdrom drive. At least it's moving ahead. On another note, I now own an SGI VisualStation 540 dual Xeon 550MHz with the full 1Gb of those weird RAM parts . 8)
Quote from: NothPlease people, stay on topic. The question here is how do you align the cdrom drive in the Cube so that the caddy can eject through the bracket hole at the front. Anything else should be posted elsewhere.
As far as getting your existing tray load CD drive to fit a cube, there are a number of options that will work. Measure the offsets and fabricate an adapter as cubist suggested, drill/tap new mounting holes in the drive itself, or God forbid, drill holes in the NeXTcube drive cage to match the mounting holes of the CD drive. IMHO, a far easier solution would be to acquire one of the slot load SCSI CD/DVD drives that are known to fit in a Cube without modification. They can be had on eBay for ~$15. I wrote a short worklog on adding a slot load CD drive to a NeXTcube here:
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=524As a side note, I used a 68040 NeXTcube drive cage. I haven't tried it with the older 68030 drive cage, which is different.