Axonix 4XR CD-ROM: Powered by PS/2 (and frustration)

Testing this intriguing Type II PC Card CD-ROM by Axonix from the mid 90s. No batteries or power supply required, it's an external PCMCIA optical drive powered entirely by the ports of a Windows 95 laptop! In theory at least, heh.
Here's an archive of the v4.7 DOS and Windows 3.1 driver disk:
archive.org/de...

[@LGRBlerbs]

For those that made it to the end of the video: if you happen to have the specific Windows 95 XR disk that I mentioned, especially version 4.7 or later, please let me know! I don't know if it'll help since I'm already using the standard Win9x IDE drivers that the manual says to use, but it'd be worth seeing what's on that disk regardless. I'd love to get the 4XR fully working - assuming it's not physically broken. As mentioned in the video, it's been cleaned, the head moves around, the disc spins. But that's as far as it gets on each laptop I've tried. No luck at all on DOS/3.1 machines.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

Not relevant, but what happens if you put it in a Powerbook or a Linux machine? UNIX systems tend to have their own drivers for weird devices like these, that's how I got my LS-120 drive working over my PowerMac's IDE bus.

[@Miasmark]

Looks like axonix was really tight with their drivers. Digging through the way back machine there only seems to have been a brief time in 1996 that did not require an account and password or just emailing support. No wonder the drivers are hard to find

[@mrfrenzy.]

For DOS/3.1 it is asking for Card Services which is like a chipset driver for the computer that needs to be loaded in config.sys. There might be one available from compaq or there are several third party drivers (they must be loaded before EMM). Awards Software DEVICE=C:\CARDWARE\PCENABLE.EXE, System Soft DEVICE=C:\CARDSOFT\CARDID.EXE, Phoenix DEVICE=C:\PCMPLUS\PCMSCD.EXE

[@chillinfartdotcc]

try with a 2A PSU instead of original one. I suspect is underpowered (making it worse with plug and play drivers)

[@villegas-su6fg]

Not enough power? was spinning up then down, it needed 1.5 amp at 5v that power supply was 1amp, im guessing the 10x drive only needed 1amp. id deff try 1.5 amp 5v power supply

[@Aitherion]

Only LGR could get me to watch a sixteen minute video about a broken CD drive.

[@wisdomdarwarszawski9036]

You spoiled me the end :c

[@R-E-D-A-C-T-E-D.]

Gee thanks for the spoiler!!! Jk.

[@TechnologistAtWork]

Hell of a throwback to the old days of buying peripherals.

[@the_panos]

I think reading the comments before you watch the video is asking for spoilers...

[@braydenh190]

Way to ruin it.

[@flaturiah]

Welcome to Blerb Oddware, where we fight with hardware and software that is odd, forgotten and obsolete.

[@plan7a]

And where, on occasion, we lose and the device wins!

[@plan7a]

Alternatively perhaps it is EVENWARE, so it won't work unless certain 'odd' or unusual protocols are followed...? LOL.

[@plan7a]

Perhaps this is why it was forgotten - as there was nothing good to remember about it and it was THAT poor?

[@plan7a]

Last one - perhaps it was obsolete before it was sold in stores? LOL.

[@olik136]

@@plan7a illegal pun

[@evilspoons]

The little information I can find says PCMCIA was limited to 3.3 V, 1 A. Even with 100% efficient conversion to whatever voltage it requires internally, this is less than half of the 7.5 W implied by the 5 V @ 1.5 A sticker. Pulling over 4 W (more than 800 mA at 5 V) from a PS/2 port seems kinda psychotic and the ability to do so was probably just an accident in design on some systems - the PS/2 spec says a maximum of 275 mA at 5 V is required. This helps explain the extremely long list of systems that don't work properly...

[@owlstead]

Yeah, I worked in the smart card industry at the time and the PS/2 port was barely able to power some of these smart card readers - those power a very efficient smart card, but don't contain any moving parts or lasers. When I saw this contraption I immediately knew that this was going to be an uphill battle. Some docks for PA's also were powered through PS/2 if I remember correctly.

[@chillinfartdotcc]

Cardbus can bring a little more power, but by date this is 16 bit PCMCIA and you are correct.

[@Jope9k]

PCMCIA comes in 5V and 3.3V flavours, the cards are keyed differently depending on which they expect so that you will not accidentally plug on a 3.3V card into a 5V only slot.

[@CptJistuce]

Snatching power from a port that isn't supposed to offer that much power is a long, proud tradition that continues to this day. (See: pretty much every USB-powered drive.)

[@owlstead]

@@CptJistuce By now they have been designed to do provide power though.

[@random007nadir]

Technology that doesn't really work and isn't that useful if it did? That's definitely an authentic 90s experience.

[@KOTYAR0]

Beautifully put

[@mattb154]

From the decade that blessed us with AM/FM tuner cards with no DACs, questionable cleaning floppies, eye strain reducing filters that did the exact opposite, and the "degauss" function.

[@fulldeep7707]

Like anything changed since then. PC machines cost an arm and a leg and what you do on it, watch memes, pooptube and porn. While it's being useless for everything else. And to make it useful you waste time on it, or download bunch of crap and buy new parts, repeating the process till you wake up, mentally grow up and just stop wasting time with it.

[@nadirjofas3140]

@@fulldeep7707 eh no?

[@AlfredRusselWallace]

@@fulldeep7707 I think you're on the wrong KZbin channel here

[@thcollegestudent]

"thank you for watching nothing" It's LGR blerbs I know what I signed up for damn it

[@ash36230]

Good blerb to you, Mr Blerbington

[@LGRBlerbs]

Blerbus blerbs you more than you will blerb Blerb, blerb, blerb

[@TheMikeydood]

We sold these at the computer store I worked at in High School, but oddly ours had a battery compartment. No PS/2 cable or power adapter. It only operated on batteries alone. We sold a surprising amount of those.

[@brianmarshall6746]

Boy, does this bring back unfortunate memories. My experience in that era was always that plug-and-play rarely worked. I always entered any dance with adding new peripherals with a driver disc, CD, or download in hand, sure that I would end up needing it after the plug-and-play experience gave no joy. Prior to widespread access to the Internet and driver downloads, this was the pits. Half the reason I steered clear of off-brands is that the bigger brands just always provided a better installation experience, and they always gave you drivers on physical media. Dodgier brands saved money on driver disc costs by inserting a slip of paper blithely proclaiming their products needed no drivers and that they were simply plug-and-play. Well, there was nothing simple about plug and play back then. Whenever it did suddenly work on the third or fourth pass, you didn't question it and never did figure out why it suddenly worked. You were just relieved that it worked. I bought a ton of Microsoft-branded and Creative-branded products back then purely because of the improved compatibility odds and driver support.

[@TheBig451]

My family and I still call it "plug-and-pray" to this day!

[@bloeckmoep]

Hence it was called "Plug and Pray!" I can calm you, this experience is not lost, just shifted into the professional and semi professional server segment. More than enough stuff there, that SHOULD work together but in reality does not because of either tiny asterisks in the manual or "Never occured configurations... never done before!"!!!

[@plan7a]

I always thought you plug it in and play with something else? (Plug and Play...) LOL.

[@desther7975]

It was a wonderful time to be a Mac user. Things truly did "just work."

[@wohlhabendermanager]

Yeah. There's a reason why PC mags with drivers and patches on CD were a huge thing back then.

[@samouflage99]

I'm seriously shocked at how good that viewing angle is on a 90's Compaq laptop. It's stunning how colorful and uncompromised the viewing angle is when you filmed it!

[@chadmasta5]

15:21 "Infuriating, but kinda fun." Sums up working with old computers in a nutshell.

[@mariosanchezolmedo6898]

Yos

[@fulldeep7707]

Nothing changed since then anyways.

[@ryanohara8938]

Infuriating but kinda fun... I'm having that on my gravestone!!

[@killerb2099]

@@ryanohara8938 Instead of "Pepperoni and cheese?"

[@Eyetrauma]

Seems like you’re asking for trouble if you design a device around drawing power from a type of system that goes out of its way to reduce its power consumption.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

Certainly back then. Laptops today can power loads of stuff.

[@mos6581com]

I've got an alaris parallel webcam that also siphons power off the PS/2 port, it works rather well.

[@nickwallette6201]

I don't understand drawing power from PS/2. This is an interface that is designed to power loads of maybe... _maybe_ 100mA. The label on the bottom of the drive claims 5V @ 1.5A. I don't know what the spec is for power draw through PCMCIA, but if you need 10% more assistance from the keyboard port, you're cutting things pretty close!

[@kinglooper]

@@FlyboyHelosim USB Power Delivery standards are far more capable than anything available at the time. Using a PS/2 port for power draw is pretty creative

[@pontizupaloki4082]

@@kinglooper Agree and yeah the technology changed a lot. What we get from USB nowadays can't compare to old USB and other ports. The voltage and overall tech changed a lot. Maybe ports shape didn't but the voltage and core system did.

[@Todd1561]

Only time I've seen a peripheral powered by a PS/2 passthru was an old Xircom Parallel port ethernet adapter I had years ago. Worked very well, but I imagine the power required for a NIC is far less than a CD drive that has motors. Not surprised that feature didn't work on many laptops. Good for you troubleshooting this thing, I would have given up a long time ago haha.

[@pontizupaloki4082]

Considering there had been plenty of good alternatives a normal person would never touch this back in a day let alone today.

[@johnfriction4919]

I had an early webcam pre-USB that hooked up to both the parallel port and a similar PS/2 pass-through cable for power.

[@SharkNinjaBlueStar]

Lord have mercy, I can _feel_ the cheapness of that thing through the freakin screen.

[@styloroc2000]

This is precisely why I don't entirely miss the "good old days" -- PC life before USB required the stars, planets to be aligned, a couple of shamans, and a priest to bless your cables, jumper and dip settings, and config.sys. and even then you were screwed if you forgot to say Klaatu Barada Nikto when you turned on the machine

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Truly, in the beginning USB required all these things. It wasn't until 98 SE that true USB plug'n'play was a thing. And even then often it required additional drivers for things work.

[@coolsunsgoldenclassics]

Nice :-)

[@GarthBeagle]

I'm betting bad caps in the drive's controller board. I've seen similar behaviour with old CD drives from that era where they won't read disks, are flaky, etc. until the caps are replaced. Try opening it up to see if there's any obvious leakage (I bet it comes apart pretty easily hahaa)

[@LGRBlerbs]

Yeah that's one thing I haven't checked yet. At least I have a parts unit, too!

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

Agreed. I have a Commodore CDTV that works perfectly fine other than occasionally reading a disc if it feels like it, and unfortunately the caps that need replacing are buried under a ton of stuff. This should be a super simple replacement job by comparison. :(

[@mmmlinux]

Totally possible the laser is dead or extremely weak. Also that looks like a massive amount of wobbling.

[@LGRBlerbs]

The wobble isn't notable once the lid is closed, it clamps it all down pretty well. But yeah, laser being dead seems entirely likely. Maybe I can swap it with the parts unit.

[@fhwolthuis]

@@LGRBlerbs does it play audio CDs?

[@TheErador]

@@fhwolthuis he said not near the end of the vid

[@Darkside1408]

You could try to locate a potentiometer on the laser caddy or near that and try to ever so slighty turn clockwise or counterclockwise to see if it's behaviour changes or eventually it start to read a disc. I have saved many cd players that way. Take note that this tactic is only temporary.

[@KiraSlith]

The pattern of repeatedly spinning up and down is a dead giveaway that the drive is struggling to find a Table of Contents, so yeah, it's VERY likely to be just a dead laser at this point.

[@hfvhf987]

The lazer or it's processor is probably shot, like old cd players used to do after a while, they just stop reading disks

[@UltimatePerfection]

Most likely the laser. The 90s optics were awful - most OG Playstations either do not work anymore or are fully OG Playstations anymore because the laser was replaced.

[@katho8472]

My thought exactly! Some drives should have a potentiometer to make it use more juice...

[@someguystudios23]

So THAT'S what happened to my discman!

[@frogjmon]

Yeah, I have a GameCube and I had to adjust a potentiometer to get it reading disks (won't last forever, will eventually need to replace it one way or another.

[@Z64sports]

@@UltimatePerfection I don't know if I'd say most. But definitely more than a few

[@trooperj9152]

Have had a couple portable dvd-rom drives that used a double ended USB adapter, one would just be power in case it wasn't getting enough from the single port.

[@dbackscott]

I have one of those USB adapters now. It’s used with a RF receiver for a presentation remote control of all things.

[@startedtech]

@@dbackscott that must be a pretty dang old remote/receiver if one USB port couldn't power it. Probably USB 1.1 or something.

[@dbackscott]

@@startedtech I don’t think it actually needs all that power. Some older laptops only supplied very limited amounts of power via the USB ports, and I think that was a workaround for those laptops.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

Same thing happens with SATA to USB adapters, the extra power is needed for mechanical drives.

[@zacksstuff]

My reasonably new LG USB Blu-ray drive also has one of those double ended cables, though it runs fine on just a single port from my modern desktop motherboard.

[@Zerbey]

You've basically described my whole experience with PCMCIA in general, it never seemed to work reliably no matter what peripheral you used.

[@adamwhite2364]

My modem and network cards with xjack worked great. Anything else, womp womp

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Tried any with storage drives? I assume something that either eats CompactFlash or a pair of SD cards should be pretty neat. Imagine doubling your storage by additional 20 GB for cheap

[@lucaslac124]

I've got a later model of this same concept which actually works. It doesn't even need power other than the pcmcia slot! I guess drives got more efficient over time.

[@brettrudy2245]

You should send the broken one to Colin at This Does Not Compute. He seems to be able to fix nearly any CD-ROM. Crossover!

[@Alpha8713]

Weird device. I've never heard of these. The closest thing that I've used was a rather enormous Panasonic CD-ROM model which used a PCMCIA SCSI card. It worked fine, but was big and heavy enough to sort of defeat the purpose of having a laptop.

[@pontizupaloki4082]

By that time most laptops already had CD drives and come to think of it executive pro machines had DVD even since DVD was released in 1996. Either way CD was a thing so yeah most people had it.

[@38911bytefree]

I have one of those, it came with a Portege 650CT. The portege is a nice form factor today, they got a "slick" notebook in 96 by making the FDD and CDROM external. You can also think in Librettos, Contura Aero, IBM 570 (hell this is slick) ..... If you travelled a lot, you dont need to carry all this extra weight and the CDROM can stay at home. I have used the Toshiba Protege for 2 o 3 years and CDROM wasnt that necesary, but FDD was. IT was pretty compact though. The IBM 570 was late 90s "ultrabook", even the battery were made of "flat cells" and not 18650s. It used a proper docking solution with CD and FDD (like some Tecras did) but for a late 90 machine it was really impresive. But .... no CDROM, nor FDD. One PCMCIA, parallel, serial. The ones comming with all the multimedia (like the Satellites) were really bulky and heavy (in comparison).

[@tehlaser]

That is indeed an interesting thing. I wonder if it's just being naughty and drawing all its power from the PS/2 port, specs be damned. That might explain why it has so many computers that it won't work with, and maybe even why your laptop crashed when you switched it on that one time. I worked for Iomega in the late 90s, and they had to do a lot of working around the 500mA limit on USB (at the time) by tuning and slowing down the disk-insert and spin-up sequence so that it wouldn't draw too much power at once for their first bus-powered zip drive. Many computers would easily supply an amp or more on their USB ports with no trouble, but the spec said 500mA max, and that only after getting permission from the host. Any chance you could put an ammeter in line with the PS/2 or barrel plug? Would be interesting to see what's actually going through there.

[@69uremum]

Thats what I was thinking, too much power draw.

[@rpavlik1]

Oh, or maybe hook up a bench supply to that barrel jack?

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Also the reason why many external hard drives came with y-cables, that allowed for pulling power from 2 ports.

[@TheBrokenLife]

Ahhh yes... Barely functional 1990s PC tech that cost a month's pay back in the day. I do not miss ye...

[@NJRoadfan]

You know its going to be a quality product when they can't even be bothered to license the Compact Disc logo /s. I have a feeling its not drivers, just broken. Old optical drives have servo failures and/or laser diode failures all the time. It could be bad SMD caps, since these tend to be crammed with them inside.

[@cleanycloth]

I have a Sony PCMCIA CD-ROM drive that requires no extra power at all - it's purely driven via the PC card adapter. Works really well!

[@UltimatePerfection]

I still wish that PCMCIA (perhaps in smaller form factor) would survive. It seems like a nice way to expand a computer without having to open the case.

[@adamwhite2364]

There was express card, but the case thickness needed for that doomed it. USB is all you'll get from here on out

[@UltimatePerfection]

@@adamwhite2364 But usb needs cables and it isn't inside the computer so it's useless for HDDs, SSDs and such. And there's no external NVMes.

[@johnathin0061892]

@@UltimatePerfection And USB plugs can be accidentally knocked while the machine is being moved, damaging the USB port. Done it, not good.

[@eDoc2020]

@@adamwhite2364 Thunderbolt carries a PCIe connection so, like ExpressCard, any type of device can be connected using it.

[@adamwhite2364]

@@eDoc2020 that's a good point; if it becomes much more widespread, then it'll be a fine replacement

[@nickbnash]

Always happy to watch absolutely nothing happen. Thanks for the video!

[@38911bytefree]

I still have my trusty Panasonic KLX783 PCMCIA CDROM. Made several installs with it, just include the drivers for the card (sci interface) then for the CD ROM and that all. It works like a champ. And works as stand alone discman with nice built in speakers (bulky indeed).

[@tra-viskaiser8737]

It just works... this is the sentence tech people say when they are hanging themselves with words.. lol

[@Ultravod]

Clint is my favorite KZbinr to watch do absolutely nothing.

[@MrsTold]

asmr for tech fans

[@Megatog615]

really love the external drive aesthetic, especially when it's a top-loading drive.

[@Nickword1]

It's bad ass how you have so many cool laptops from different eras to try out stuff. That's amazing!!

[@LGRBlerbs]

I've been fortunate in that respect, folks have very kindly sent in some amazing gear over the years :)

[@Nickword1]

​@@LGRBlerbs That is so very cool! Thank you so much for all the awesome content you always upload!! I have been watching your videos for years. Also when ever you got some extra time check out my custom IBM PC 350 sleeper build I think you might really like it. I got me a huge IBM P200 20 inch CRT monitor to match with the case along with a custom IBM Model M cruiser ship keyboard. All the IBM badge logos match on the case, monitor and keyboard so it's really cool! It' took me years to find all the matching parts to complete this sleeper build but I plan on using it daily for many years till my old age! LOl kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJeviYJ9rr6AatU

[@Jimir]

Back in the mid-2000s I had an external harddrive that had the option to use one of those PS/2 things for power. Being stuck on a laptop with limited ports, I used a USB to two PS/2 cable dongle, used the PS/2 power on the Keyboard portion, along with a basic ps/2 Microsoft keyboard , & a Microsoft optical USB mouse with USB to PS/2 adaptor on the mouse side, so I could get three things working on two ports. I'm still shocked it worked.

[@Evgenii_Fedorovskii]

Yes, sometimes computer parts (especially retro ones) can drive you crazy when you try to make them work ... I understand you. Still, it was fun to watch! Thank you! =)

[@fiereke]

Haha, sometimes that's what Blerbs is all about: absolute worthless garbage tec from the past.🤣🤣 Love it!

[@moomah5929]

For my old laptop (DX4/75) I got a parallel port CD-Rom drive enclosure (new or new old stock) where you put a normal internal CD-Rom drive inside. It works quite well and is build like a tank with its PC gray steel case. While it has its power supply build right in, using standard PC power leads, I wouldn't want to carry it around as it is quite heavy. It's also not a plug and play device but came with it's own driver disk and Oak CD-Rom drivers.

[@theandroids6796]

Wing Commander 3 (and 4 later on). My older brother had this for his laptop. He claimed it was scsi but I was to young to know what that even was besides expensive. Wow. Memories here Clint. Thank you!

[@theandroids6796]

Also, here are some things I remember (I was a young kid) 1: My brothers had the wall brick. 2: Was not the 10x (I know this because he upgraded to a Sony drive for the speed increase. Oh how dumb we were! :) ) 3: This was on a machine that ran Tabworks as a shell on 3.11 on DOS. To play WC3 and 4, we could only use DOS and that was no problem because even I at that age preferred DOS 4 or 5 variants over 3.11 and the pre Win95 environments. (Apple II/e kid) 4: The DOS install I played on did have a custom Autoexec that did load cd drive for when my brother was not home to help. So some .com or other program was needed for these games on dos.

[@wildweasel486]

It is evidently possible for one of these to be powered entirely by the PCMCIA slot; I own an Addonics brand CD-ROM drive (I do not know what year, it was a Goodwill find) that plugs in via PCMCIA, and somehow works totally fine from that alone. And here's the kicker: it's doing this from a Toshiba Libretto 70CT. Something that tiny, powering an entire CD-ROM drive. It's either a 4X or an 8X speed, I can't quite remember, but it installed and ran Hoyle Solitaire, so I was fairly happy about finding it.

[@oasntet]

According to the PS/2 spec, you should expect to be able to draw 275mA @ 5V. I'm guessing a _lot_ of motherboards skimped on that power requirement, assuming it wouldn't be powering more than a keyboard or mouse, maybe 50mA tops. OTOH, the PCMCIA spec has multiple voltages (12V, 5V and 3.3V) and a peak of 1A, which was often not enough for wifi and GSM devices.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

And here am I soldering around on my keyboard because it pulls 200mA and my board won't work with it at stock.

[@fulldeep7707]

This is one of those devices that were built to work on one machine doing specific tasks only. Even tho considering this doesn't have a burn option and by the time Win98 came out rendering it pointless since machines by then most already had built in CD drives and burners.

[@bryanstevens5901]

You should get help.

[@nucflashevent]

A guess about why the PC turned off when you turned the drive off...I know some (I have no idea how many or how common it was) PCs could be switched on over a keyboard connected to the PS/2 port. If the drive sent a small burp of energy when you clicked it off, it might have made the computer think a shutdown command had been sent by an attached keyboard.

[@AaronOfMpls]

Or it could just be a power glitch. PS/2 keyboards and mice weren't really meant to be hot-swappable. And I've had power glitches affect a computer before. At my old house, my old PC used to wake up from sleep mode when you turned the bathroom fan on or off (I forget which). It was a desktop, and I think that outlet was on the same circuit as the fan.

[@AmadeuszKlodawski]

Yeah, I think some PCs just doesn't like it when you hot-plug a PS2 device. My old PC would switch off if I did that with my keyboard. Made my younger self quite scared I'd broken it the first time it happened. 😨

[@pontizupaloki4082]

I had a problem with a keyboard. It got broken, at first it wrote at random and soon after it shut down my PC or restarted it when I pressed certain keys. At first I thought my system is broken, changed the keyboard turns out it's only that. Tried the keyboard on another system just to make sure, safe to say it didn't even wanted to boot up with it.

[@moosemaimer]

I recently saw a machine reboot because I unplugged a USB drive. And yes I had ejected it in software beforehand. GG Dell.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

power on through keyboard is still a thing. Nowadays over USB, but the idea is the same. ATX doesn't fully power off, which allows it to be started not only through keyboard, but also LAN.

[@TechnologistAtWork]

Those things always break as a storage and as an adapter. They just suck. Please don't be discouraged from uploading videos of things that don't work. We still enjoy those videos as they're very educational, and entertaining. Not to mention the negative nostalgia of buying peripherals back in the day and having to return them because they're incompatible with your computer.

[@joseluki]

Yeah, I do not miss that part of computers back then when you had to wrestle with new hardware to be recognized by your computer.

[@leetymcleet6490]

I'm picturing the guy who sent that to you watching this and laughing. Evil laughter 😂

[@MaximilienNoal]

I like those cozy troubleshouting vids with cute laptops.

[@sbrazenor2]

This makes me appreciate my USB CD/DVD/Bluray drives so much more. They just work seamlessly.

[@circuitsandcigars1278]

I’m getting flashbacks of the time I made a DOS boot disk for a drive like this

[@equinoxmechanism]

This reminds me of a portable CD-ROM drive I had back in the day around the same time this was probably made. I had a PCMCIA sound card with a breakout that had the vol controls and speaker out, mic. It also had a SCSI cable coming out of it to attach to the CD-ROM. it could be disconnected from the breakout and used with batteries as a portable CD player too. I used it with a militarized/extremely ruggedized waterproof unbranded laptop with windows 95 to play Kings Quest 7, TTD Deluxe and NES/SNES emulators back when I was in high school. I'd even take it on the school bus with me to game on the way to school lol

[@YonezH]

I have a Panasonic 20x model. It uses a PCMCIA to IDE card. On the bottom there are DIP-switches to switch between low speed powered by PCMCIA only and high speed using a power supply. Works a treat. Panasonic also had a 8X model with built in speakers. That would be a great oddware-item.

[@nigelchin3286]

The frustration reminds me of the macintosh ad that ended with 'Get a macintosh!'

[@joes9954]

I still miss the brick that was my Armada 7800. Very versatile for the time with easy to swap Cd/floppy drive or hard drives plus a great dock.

[@Gappasaurus]

Nothing better than an LGR PCMCIA CD-ROM ☺️

[@lurkerrekrul]

Seeing stuff like this makes me glad I skipped that era of Intel-based systems. I started with the C64 which was largely plug-&-play for its devices, went to the Amiga which I had little trouble with, to Windows 98, which already had a CD-ROM drive installed. Even when I installed a CD-RW drive, it just worked.

[@DavidWonn]

The title initially led me to believe this peripheral was specifically for an IBM PS/2. Cool! But then when I saw that it shares a PS/2 *port* I thought, what could possibly go wrong? ;-)

[@nicksvitak5416]

Did I... did I just sit here and watch a video about a broken cd drive for 16 minutes? And enjoyed it?

[@U014B]

The Axonix Pro-Media 4X "It just doesn't work." _-LGR, 2021_

[@Leahi84]

Damn, well that was disappointing. That thing looked really cool initially.

[@bobpowers9862]

Years ago, when CD-roms were quite new (1x and 2x were the only ones available) these things could be quite fragile. Especially the ones coming out of Taiwan back then. So, me being me, I'd do a post-fail autopsy: and I found that the motor that moved the LASER head would often fail. Rarely, the fail point was the mylar strap that wrapped around the head, and move the LASER slide, and that could be re-attached (if it wasn't simply busted in half). But more often than not, the motor itself would fail. Hardly surprising: It had to move in a non-linear way, to create a linear track-speed: Think about it-- the track is a spiral from the edge towards the center. As the track moves along, the spin motor has to slow down, to maintain the constant linear speed, and the head's motor has to change too. It really was amazing these worked at all.... I bet your head motor is knackered.

[@eDoc2020]

Clint said the carriage was moving, so that probably isn't the problem here. Based on the blue screen Clint received, it appears it was eventually able to read the TOC and the ISO9660 headers, and I don't think that could happen if the stepper failed.

[@WillOnSomething]

The funny part is, the PCMCIA card is higher quality than the CD-ROM drive itself.

[@CaptainPiracy]

Posted over on the LGR Facebook about a PCMCIA CD ROM that has zero batteries, works in Win 95/98/2K/XP with default windows drivers. It's a CenDyne Compact Portable CDROM drive.

[@TravisStamper]

Thanks for the video Clint.

[@eddiehimself]

I'm not surprised you couldn't get the drive working with power coming from the PS/2 port. The PS/2 connector is only supposed to supply up to 100mA of current, so having a device with a 1A power draw is ridiculous. Of course, not all manufacturers followed the original PS/2 specification, which is I suspect why there is that list of compatible computers, being the ones that can supply that amount of current from the PS/2 port.

[@anonymic79]

I hated this method of adding interfaces to a machine. I had a hand-me-down IBM that didn't have floppy or CD-rom. Getting Win 2k on it made me hate the machine, floppies, adapters and cables everywhere. Laptops with cheap outs like no drives should have never existed. What a shitty way to sell machines.

[@someguystudios23]

Petition to require all laptops to have disc drives

[@Dudebrotheguy]

The end of the video really gets me Just imagining you are a kid in the 90, you saved up your money to buy a cd player so you can play youre cd games and you end up with this

[@TechKingdom35]

Cool drive. I actually own a Sony Vaio PCGA-CD51/A from the early 2000s. And it actually gets all of its power through the PC Card Slot, which I always found amusing. It needs no external power. But then it's way newer than this...

[@cairsahrstjoseph996]

Sure something happened in this video. Some electrons went from A to B, causing a motor to spinney and an LED to flashy.

[@virginiahansen320]

I don't have any of the drivers, but I had one of those back in the day and it worked fine with my old Thinkpad. The power worked fine. It was never the highest quality build, so it's not a huge surprise that they haven't lasted, but it was cheap and it worked.

[@enilenis]

1.5A on 5V is a lot. USB was designed to supply what the motherboards at the time could safely provide, which was 5V 0.5A, and PS2 port will often feed no more than that. 1/3 of what the CD drive is asking for. I was dealing with a very similar issue few months ago. Most power is consumed when the disc is spinning up and the laser is moving to check for media. I get 1A spikes in power draw. All because the drive makers wanted to have shortest response time possible. Instead of gently building up acceleration, they dumped full 5V available to make the user feel happy about not having to wait.

[@bloxyman22]

That "Powered by PS/2" made my brain glitch out, so have to watch this now to see how that would even be possible...

[@w140]

LGR: “...cheap feeling” Me, looking at, probably, the thickest cable I ever saw on any pc peripherals👀

[@d.e.v.z.e.r.o]

Did you not see the episode with the Voodoo 3 3500 Card? That is a thick cable.

[@tfruba]

If it's really a IDE drive then the cable would have 40 single cables in this, one, black cable. If you'll imagine 40 cables (everyone needs to have its own insulation) then you'll have a feeling that this is one of the thinest cables that you've ever seen ;)

[@d.e.v.z.e.r.o]

@@tfruba How many of the wires in the old 40 pin PATA Cable were actually required?

[@tfruba]

@@d.e.v.z.e.r.o AFAIK all of them. However, there are 8 ground pins, so they can be combined as one.

[@VeraTR909]

275 mA is the max current for a PS/2 port (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port).

[@GeckonCZ]

Unfortunatelly, many non-IBM boards can't supply even that...

[@greggv8]

What you need to make this work with DOS and Windows 3.1 is the latest PCMCIA Card and Socket Services. Apparently what you have on that floppy is the "point driver" for that PCMCIA IDE controller card. Point drivers were for a specific device or possibly a range of devices of the same type from the manufacturer. The other type of device driver was the "class driver". Devices of a specific type such as battery backed DRAM cards could all use a class driver for that device type, no matter who made them as long as they adhered to the specifications the class driver supported. Of course getting more than a few PCMCIA devices all working so they could be swapped in and out without needing many different bootup configurations was a huge PITA because Card and Socket Services and every driver for every card device you were going to use had to be loaded into RAM together. Then with Windows For Workgroups 3.11 it all had to be compatible with Window's two 32 bit file and disk access switches if you wanted to take advantage of those options. If any point or class driver wasn't, then you were at least stuck being unable to use 32bit disk access, without which 32bit file access was pointless because Windows would be using the slower BIOS disk access. That was one of the top bennies of Windows 95 on laptops. Once you had the PCMCIA slot driver and Win95 compatible device drivers (some class and point drivers were included with windows but obviously not the point driver for one of your CD-ROM cards) installed in Windows, it would "just work" and you could easily have several cards to swap around without running out of memory. Aside from all that, I'd say the 4x drive has a dead LASER. Hopefully the 10x drive uses the same sled and connections so you can try swapping it over. If not that, perhaps the manufacturer and model of the 4x mechanism can be determined then a suitable sled can be found in an old laptop CD-ROM drive.

[@clutchkman]

All part of the 90’s pc nostalgia.

[@squirlmy]

LGR This is how I've experienced mid-90s tech, since the mid-nineties!!! I love "vintage" DOS machines, but along with Windows95 came a plethora of incompatible hardware like this. Apparently you have nostalgia for games of the time, but after just trying to get basic internet software working on these, I've grown to hate them. I like interesting niche computers too, like PowerPC Macs, which were about 1999-2006, PDAs, actually all tech EXCEPT for mid 90s Windows PC, which can only be saved by installing Linux, and there's lots of interesting linux attempts to switch DOS and Windows users, dosLinux, Wubi, Co-Linux. All video cards and audio cards of the period should also be junked. It was a five-year nightmare. And I much prefer FreeDOS to any microsoft DOS. Not coincidentally, some games and divers specifically need MS-DOS, and it was that short period when MS was competing with OS/2, DR-DOS, and other forgotten DOS, and MS encouraged devs to use MS-DOS only features, a curse of Montezuma upon them!

[@420anonymous]

I used an old computer for a experimental server for a few years. It would randomly hang every few months, despite being on some seriously old console-only Linux. Finally dug into the logs, and... it was the PS/2 keyboard. It would shift, disconnect/reconnect randomly, and literally crash the ENTIRE thing. Also I recall PS/2 required a full reboot to check for new connections. PS/2 is wild. (And still kicking.)

[@haywoodyoudome]

You recall correctly, PS/2 isn't hot swappable. Forget to plug the mouse in? Sucks to be you, shut down, plug it in, and boot up.....

[@ergosteur]

I actually had a USB 2.0 external hard drive from the 2000s that got its extra power from a PS/2 port, as well as a USB 2.0 cardbus host that used a similar cable to this CD drive

[@pawelw3000]

This vid inspired me to take out my Sony Vaio PCGA-CD51 out of the shelf to test if it even works (I imported it from Japan). I noticed something I did not pay attention to before. It's a 16x CD-ROM drive that takes power fully from PCMCIA slot, no other power supply needed. I guess it is possible after all.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

More modern components that require less power and more sophisticated behaviour might be able to keep it in spec.

[@Zombertino]

I remember a friend of mine used to have one of those. I distinctly remember him telling me that it was a pain in the ass to set up the first time he got it and that was back in the day when it was actually a new product, so there ya go. Conclusion: that thing was a POS 😆

[@jackmcslay]

If I saw a photo of this thing without context I would have thought it was a 3DO model with that design

[@steffenjachnow8176]

A friend of mine had a PCMCIA-CD-ROM for his Amiga 1200 back then.

[@one_b]

That might be cheap but I like the look... similar to the NEC top loading external CD-ROMs I desperately wanted for my Amiga when I was a kid.

[@JohnVance]

Yeah my guess is that 98SE would have picked it up without having to install any drivers separately.

[@jeramzPC]

At first glance of the thumbnail, i thought it was a mortal kombat cartridge game review

[@MrPeetersmark]

That’s one deep hole you got yourself into.

[@CatorceKilos]

Gotta love the on/off switch tho!

[@metatechnologist]

Back in the day if you wanted a cdrom for your labtop this was literally the only solution as laptops *had no* cdrom drives!!

[@fondajames]

i have to wonder how many got returned to stores, gotta be a large number

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

I had a similar-idea network adapter for Mac PowerBooks that drew power from the "keyboard/mouse" port - a SCSI-to-Ethernet adapter, with a plug to draw power from Apple's "ADB" port.

[@Eyetrauma]

Yeah those Global village modems they used to bundle with the Performas used that same trick

[@CAESARbonds]

I owned 2 of these made for ibm. They came with a battery for mobile use. Best thing was they served standalone as discman.

[@steelscooter]

The laser unit might be toast, being in such a flimsy case and being beanged about.

[@fuzz11111111]

In the mid/late 90''s a friend of mine had a 2 speed CD-ROM burner, it used the parallel port for communication, and its power brick had a PS/2 plug on it that was definitely NOT electrically compatible with a computers PS/2 socket.... But it wasn't long before that mistake was made and my mate had to use a USB-PCI addon card to connect his keyboard and mouse (because his PS/2 ports were now dead). Pretty awful of them to use a PS/2 plug/socket for power in an era where that was the standard for input peripherals.

[@Death_MTL_Dude]

5:12 Todd Howard in distance "It just works"

[@ddniUK]

Reminds me of the Squirrel CDROM PCMCIA adapter for the Amiga 1200.

[@vespasian606]

I let the video run to the end, liked and left. You win some you lose some.

[@denniseldridge2936]

Hi a word about PS/2 ports - I found that they can cause the system to halt if you hot-plug and -unplug. It's always best to do any on/off operations with the power completely off. I don't know why that should be, unless there's an interrupt line that gets confused perhaps. Oh yeah, and those early PnP things were more plug and pray lol

[@flashgordon6659]

just bought doom 3 because of you,good game

[@pablotoledo3935]

From the way the disc spins, I could deduce that there is a problem with the laser / lens.

[@andresbravo2003]

this is quite a nice device. I hope this might found out Mr. Clint!