AT&T 3b2 vs SCSI2SD drive replacement

Swift Griggs swiftgriggs at gmail.com
Wed Jun 1 17:51:18 CDT 2016


On Thu, 2 Jun 2016, pete wrote:
> AAT.  2048 bytes is the common CDROM standard, used by PCs and their 
> ilk, whereas SGIs want 512-byte blocks on CDROMs.

Ah, quite right. Thanks, Pete.

> Some SGIs/IRIX versions (eg Indy and later, running IRIX 5.3 or later) 
> will issue a command to make the CDROM switch to 512-byte blocks instead 
> of their default 2048.

Huh... I didn't realize that. I remember using one of those Pioneer 
slot-loading SCSI drives to load IRIX at some point and it still had the 
jumper as the switching mechanism. I guess I just haven't seen SCSI CDROM 
drives that didn't because I only order or fiddle with the ones that do.

> Most modern SCSI CDROMs honour that, but older ones may have jumpers or 
> PCB links that need to be set.

Does anyone have such a beast and can share a model # ? If they are cheap 
enough, I'd replace my current crapola 1X external "ace in the hole" CDROM 
with it. My hang-up has always been the block size issue. 

-Swift




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