Fixing & Installing a Parallel Port CD-ROM

Greetings!

LGR here with an LGR thing and today, I would like to put a CD-ROM connected to this Compaq Presario 425 which.. now my favorite computers. It’s an all in one design I’ve had it longer than I had any of my other PCs. And yeah, It’s very yellow but I kind of like it like that It was.. It’s just gotten yellow over time no smoking or anything. I had it for more than half its life. So, err.. yeah here’s the thing I.. erf.. it only has a 3.5 inches floppy drive right there and that the only way that you can get data onto this thing unless you connect it to a network.

You need to pretty much.. get an external CD-ROM and that’s what I’ve done here with this Backpack CD-Rewriter I found this at Goodwill years ago I mean like. I don’t know men 8 or 9 years now probably. And hum, so far I don’t know...I just haven’t.. I just haven’t.. erf.. really thought about it too much until recently when I had this thing out and I’m like and I’m like Dang I still never installed that CD-ROM drive So.. I got this!

Hum.. just the package, downloaded it, burned it down to a floppy disk and here we go!

I’m going to plug-it in to the Compaq. And  that this works. This particular drive wasn’t actually listed on the compatible stuff for this software, so.. we’ll see. I don’t know if. Maybe it turn on when the computer turns on coz the.. light on the power supply itself is on. We will see. I would assume I would have power already. Yeah this computer is awesome. It’s actually from my High School. Computer class was getting rid of a bunch of old computers I mean they were. Like 10 years old at the time. Now they’re.. much older obviously. Let’s just install the disk. Install the software! Restart your computer by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL.

Okay, whatever. Alright. So it has loader the driver there, that’s looking good. And.. it just. So it’s set as drive D: which is cool I guess this thing is just not getting power, somehow. Here that’s why it ended up at Goodwill. I’ll only just make sure that somehow there’s not like. some software that opens it or so meth. Nah! That wouldn’t make any sense I’m just gonna look around in there anyway. It says a Backpack drive is available but that could just be seeing its own driver.

Hum.. screw this. Were just gonna.. open this up, and see what’s inside, coz maybe. something’s just wrong, and if anything if it’s like other external CD drives I used in the past it’s just a normal drive in there with like a little board in there and things in there either nhernher. And this brings back some memories trying to get the CD drive working in this computer Err.. we’ve set up like a dozen of theses Presario’s.

Oh I did, really, It was sort of my job Err.. working for the computer department in the high school back then, so, I would have to set up these things, yep. It’s a pretty simple little relatively tool less system for opening, guys. It’s just these little pins inside here we go!

Simple enough. Shield here. Some oxidization, it looks like. It’s about what I expected, its. just like a standard IDE like ATAPI Yeah a CD-ROM, you got the power supply connecting that little bit there. The power supply is external of course but this is where it connects to it. Huh... IDE connector, you got the 4-pin to 4-pin audio there for sound.  

Some little bug egg or some kind right there. At this point I think what I’m going to do is try an external power supply of another type and just hook it directly to here, bypass this board see if the drive itself is gonna do anything and if it doesn’t do anything then I’ll just replace the drive with another one I’ll also try to switch this cable to this other little port here and see it that does anything.

Alright, so I’ve got it connected to the other port on the board there to get power and. Nothing. Well that eliminated one thing. Alright! So it is the next morning I had to go out and grab a couple things to test some stuff here and I just got this external power supply here which is just kind of normal, like Molex connector and were gonna try this.. hum without messing with any of the internal circuitry and see if the drive is like powering on to an external drive or a power supply. And if it does then there’s something wrong sit the board.

If not, then we might just have a dead drive. Yeah its... just not.. doing anything. So I’ll give  you an example here. Hers just another drive I’m probably gonna replace this one with this one. That’s just a standard.. CD-ROM. If I plug-in the power there. So.. that’s what we should be getting with this but were not. So I’m just going to assume that this is dead and. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll do something with it another time but honestly, I’ll probably just recycle it. Just as a test of this board though I’m gonna plug it back in and then plug-it in to.. err.. this here.

Alright. So the circuitry here is perfectly fine. at least the power portion of it is. And that’s it!

Just 4 screws, and.. slides right on out of there what is this thing?

It’s a Mitsumi, January 2001. Gonna replace it with this.. Compaq unit which is 32 speed, one January.. or sorry July 1999 it’s when this one was put together so. I get this, right?

So I was over at my offices computer parts, and what not and I found.. The drive that I actually wanted to hook-up to this in the first place. This is a.. you know, much older version of the Backpack.. err.. external CD-ROM drive quad speed,  this is perfect for.. this. I mean like era, it’s appropriate and aesthetically its appropriate. Otherwise it’s like the same kind of thing. It has a nifty on/off switch though.

Yeah.. while anyway I’m still gonna repair this one and see if I can get it working because now I’m just on a mission from god!

Simple enough. Hmm, so hopefully this cable goes back in the same spot coz the ports aren’t always.. in the same spot on the back of every CD drives. I didn’t even checked beforehand. Thankfully it’s an about the same spot, so that’s good. 

I did check to see if  4-pin was compatible with this coz sometimes different drives have different pinots but this is a later drive, so I figured it would, and it does. And this is for the CD audio. And.. normally this is gonna plug-in to a sound card but it says this is external it actually has this CD audio output right here normal 3.5mm audio jack.

And for a quick power on test everything should be fine now. I kind of want to scrape some of that rust off of there, hum. Yeah, totally not necessary but it makes me feel better I mean its smooth.. Wow goodness. As I was saying anyway it’s nice and smooth now and that just makes me feel better. I love how simple that is to reassemble. And, err.. yeah!

I mean that looks.. good!

Colors are about the same, and everything. Let’s try this thing out!

I know someone is gonna ask, like you know what about Zip Drives?

Well, I’ve got plans for the future. No Zip Drives today, but you know a CD drive in a way is still more versatile than a Zip Drive because if I want to get stuff over to this then I can just write a CD really quick whereas with the Zip. I mean I can mess with USB once but I.. its.. just.. its.. I don’t want to do that. I’m gonna go for SimCity 2000 Special Edition!

Okay its reading!

 It’s trying to!

Really slowly..

That was a little slower than I.. thought it would but it did . That’s cool!

I’m curious it’s going to see it in Windows or if I’m gonna have to do anything extra for that. Nah! It sees it just fine, that’s awesome!

Well, let’s install SimCity 2000 for Windows!

I have not seen a CD load from this computer in like... 15 years, maybe?

Even though this is a 32x CD-ROM you’ll notice that its actually installing very slowly as for a couple reasons: one its going over parallel and two it’s just a slow old hard drive in there too but honestly most of that is probably because of the parallel connection it’s not known for being fast.

Coz if I was going to install the SCSI card in there err.. the controller that would allow me to use a SCSI CD drive in an external fashion that would be a lot faster but this... I mean.. its.. yeah, what you’re gonna do. And the setup is complete!

Notice!

Close all this crap down. See what we get. Oh yeah got a test for that display. Alright, so we’ve got that.. video running this comes straight off of the CD-ROM I can see the light flashing like crazy over there. It is a little slow to respond, but again I think that is just the parallel port being.. silly. Its Maxis Man, here to save the day in Barcelona!

One more thing I want to try here is CD audio. With this though I think I’m gonna have to do it in DOS because. I have this Creative. Yeah its saying that the MSCDEX or CD-ROM is not found. installed or whatever. This is the software that the Sound Blaster 16 uses for CD drives. But I think that has to be like connected to the Sound Blaster itself, so!

We are gonna run the DOS CD player. I know I actually.. don’t have audio CDs on hand but I do have a copy of Extreme Paint Brawl and this has a.. Red Book CD audio Eh this is just sad, this is the worst thing to test McKay.. we got track play here.. err..

this is apparently how we do it?

Aha! So this actually shows the tracks that are on there and track 1 is always gonna be data for these mixed modes CDs so that’s the game data. The game, or horrible game and err.. tracks 2 to 7 are the audio, so. It is now playing track 2 but because of that audio port on the back not being plugged-in to like anything I’m gonna have to plug-in the speakers directly to the CD drive. The music is supposed to sound like that, believe it or not. It is one of the worst games sound tracks ever. But its working!

I wish it wasn’t working. Well that’s the Backpack CD-ROM, the later version that used to be a CD-RW, working on my Compaq Presario 425 I love this computer. I have that music. But I love this computer, and. That’s a pretty cool thing to have fixed, I think, I don’t know. 

On the other hand, I.. err.. really wish that I had found my older one first and didn’t have to go through all troubles, but whatever!

At least this one now is working and I hope that it made a halfway entertaining video, at least.

And as always, thank you very much for watching!

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