15 Jun
2016
15 Jun
'16
11:47 a.m.
On older Apple 68k machines, having an Apple-branded CDROM means you can
be assured it'll boot (though it's rumored that many generic SCSI CDROMs
work for booting) and also that it'll "just work" on most of the OSs.
I'm guessing it's a simple check to see if the vendor in the firmware is
"APPLE". Has anyone ever managed to hack the firmware of something like a
Yamaha, Pioneer, or Plextor drive so that it lies and says it's "APPLE"
thus being fully enabled by the OS & hardware ? Does anyone know anything
about flashing CDROM firmware and the dynamics of such things? I wonder if
it'd just be a matter of a simple hexedit/byte-patch on the firmware image
then load it up... Is this a bogus idea?
The reason for this is that if it's possible, I could buy a Pioneer slot
loading SCSI CDROM drive, stuff it into my Quadra 660AV, and then hack it
to "just work" instead of needing drivers et al. The slot cover isn't big
enough for a normal tray-drive CDROM to work. Thus I can only use a CD300i
caddy-based drive (or theoretically - a slot drive). My 300i is a bit of
PoS and even after I cleaned it, the thing still has a lot of read
problems.
-Swift