. | Simplicity Is Key- 14 Oct. 1999
Eric "Zoltan"
DeStefano
Extensions, System Folders, ROMs -- such simple things to
the average Mac user. However, to the PC user they can
become your worst nightmare. At first. I left off last time where I
was trying to get my Panasonic SCSI-2 CDROM drive to work.
The cover to my Quadra
605 still laying on the floor, power cables all over the
place, and an internal double ended SCSI-2 cable looking at
me saying "Plug me in." The CD-ROM drive was jumpered to ID
3 and terminated. Feeling confident about Apple's plug and play methods (so
I heard), I plugged it in, did my little power on trick, and
saw the happy Mac. With the Quadra booting fine, I reached
for my Mac OS 8.1 CD, put it in the tray, and closed it. The
monitor then flashed with an interesting message about how
it found an unrecognized disk, and if I wanted to eject or
initialize it. "Initialize, that sounds nice," I thought to
myself not knowing any better, while clicking the welcoming
"Initialize" button. The CD spun up, and I smiled in what seemed to be my
first victory in the Macintosh world. Then the drive
violently spit out its tray, as if it had eaten something
horrible. Another message popped up on the screen saying,
"This disk cannot be initialized because it is locked". A
question mark popped up over my head, and I sighed knowing
this was not going to be easy. My first error was not taking the Macintosh at face
value, and taking a typical PC person stance towards it. For
those of you that may not know, a PC person's first instinct
when confronted with what they think is a driver/hardware
problem is to rip apart the whole machine believing there is
a conflict somewhere. We will not stop until all we have
running is a CPU, memory, video, keyboard, and the device in
question. A reformat may also take place, and then you get
to spend the next 3-7 hours reinstalling your OS, and all
your programs. - To think, I actually got a kick out of this way back
when
After realizing that amputation was not the answer, I
spent the next three nights of my life reading everything I
could about ROMs and extensions. After doing some research,
I decided that extensions would be the best place to begin,
because there was nothing I could find discussing Apple
device ROMs. I started to think that these "ROMs" where just
myths and lies to confuse PC users like myself. Extensions were an extremely hard concept to grasp. "It
so easy!" I can hear all you reading this shouting, but to a
PC guy it's not. We are used to everything being complex,
and complicated. "Ha ha, you mean all I got to do is put
this little file in my extensions folder, reboot, and
presto, it works? What is Apple smoking" I laughed at
my understanding monitor. "O.K., I'll play along with your
little game. Let's find some drivers! Err, I mean
extensions." While shuffling through various links at Low
End Mac, I happened to fall upon Pure-Mac.
Pure-Mac just happened to have, not one, but two Apple
CD-ROM drivers. After looking carefully, I downloaded Apple
CD-ROM version 5.3.1, because they claimed it would work on
some non-Apple CD-ROM drives. "What's the difference! A
driver is a driver is a driver," my PC yelled up at me. I
thought the same thing. I transferred the binary file to my Mac and unstuffed it.
Following the instructions, I placed it in my extensions
folder and rebooted. Yet once again, no dice. It simply
ejected the CD, saying it couldn't read it. Feeling
helpless, I started to cruise Apple's tech exchange. It
turns out there are many people out there encountering the
same problem. This is also where I learned about Apple
ROMs. Apple ROMs, to my understanding, are what make Macintosh
devices truly plug and play. The ROM contains built in code
to make the device run natively without the use of external
drivers. These ROMs are also proprietary; they are only
found in Apple equipment. I was feeling quite down about
learning this fact, because I feared that I would never get
my drive to work. I looked around Tech Exchange a little
longer and found a link that guided me to salvation. The link lead me to The
Mac Driver Museum, and there I found a driver called
Sunrise CD Driver (This driver is no longer on their site,
but I have posted it on one of my sites http://www.well.com/~zoltan/cd-sunrise-22c.hqx).
Following the same procedure as the Apple driver, I placed
the extension in my system folder, rebooted, and this time
it did read the CD! After jumping for joy, I began to think about my little
adventure. I have to say that the Macintosh driver model is
the most simplistic thing you will ever encounter. Drop,
reboot, and it works. If you have the right drivers that is.
I have also heard people complain about how the Apple ROM in
devices is just proprietary garbage. It is not garbage, but
a work of art. With the Apple ROM they have achieved a true
plug & play environment, instead of just saying it is
like the PC world.  Mac Metamorphosis IndexRecent Editorials at Low End Mac- Where's the G4/500?, Dan
Knight, Mac Musings, 1/21. "Remember how Steve Jobs announced the
Power Mac G4 on August 31, 1999?"
- The World Wide Web, Dan
Knight, Mac Musings, 1/20. It's grown to over one billion pages
with no end in sight.
- Macintosh 2000
revisited, Dan Knight, Low End Mac, 1/19. Eight years ago
Henry Bortman guessed what today's Mac would be. Today we're
evaluating his predictions.
- PC to Mac and back and back,
My First Mac, 1/18. "I still love and use my original Mac Plus --
I would never get rid of it for anything."
- SAM, the Sixteenth
Anniversary Macintosh, Anne Onymus, The Rumor Mill, 1/18.
Cross a Color Classic with a G3 and what do you get?
- New @ Low End Mac:
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