[gmcenroe]

Thank you for your long email on suggestions for solving my CDROM problem on my Indigo2.

First regarding confusion about Indigo vs Indigo2, that was not my doing, I simply quoted what Marc Olsen wrote elsewhere about CDROMs on SGI systems where he compared the old Indigo to later Indigo2 and other systems.

I also emailed Douglas Mashek for advice and he very quickly responded that my Toshiba 6201B should work on my Indigo2 without a jumper on the Block for 512 boot bytes if there is no such jumper position on these drives, but he has used them successfully. My computer was packed away in the garage for 15 years until last week. The original Toshiba 6201B drive in the computer was one I had installed 15 years ago and a do recall using it to upgrade the OS from IRIX 6.2 to 6.5 without any problems. The most recent problem was that the tray simply would not respond to eject requests from the CDROM itself or from the software. This unit was made in Fe. 1999 and had Hewlett-Packard rebranding on it labeled Ver. No 003 ROM Ver 1037. The replacement drive I bought on ebay was also a Toshiba 6201B but made in July 1999 with Ver No. 002 and ROM Vers BM71114 and without any rebranding by another company. It also would not open the tray if the Indigo2 was in the vertical position on its feet, but when I put it horizontal it would open, but not consistently, sometimes it would reopen after I tried to close it and would keep reopening after it was closed without a CD in the tray.  Doug said that sometimes if the gears are cracked that the CD just doesn't get loaded into the proper position for it to be read. Mine seemed pretty smooth but inconsistent in open and close operations. 

As far as parity settings, neither of these drives were recognized if Parity was set to on, so I guess the other two SCSI drives, the HDD and Tape drive are also Parity off, I have not checked since I don't have the manuals for those drives. 

I did agree on your recommendation set the SCSI ID to 3 and as you said we both know that is not a requirement. I didn't mean to criticize you on that in my post, sorry if you felt that way.

Where do you get your Sun rebranded CDROM drives, maybe I should try that next, if so do they have part numbers or original branding from some other source with part numbers. I don't need a DVD drive yet. I was thinking of trying a Plextor PX-40TSi  CDROM that has the 512 block setting, but they all look like junk on ebay. 

The seller on ebay said he would take the drive I could not get to work back. He claims he tested it and it read 3 different CDs but didn't give details on what computer he tested it on.

Next I guess I can test my tape drive to see if it still works.

Thanks,
Glenn