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Mitsumi CD-ROM (wonky!) Help Needed

Raven said:
I have a Mitsumi CD-ROM drive that I got from a friend. He has like 3 more of them, and gave me one because they are quite unique. They have a panel in the front that you press in, and when you release, it pops out. You then pull the thing that pops out, and then a lid can be opened to insert the CD into. You then close the lid, and push the drawer back in.

Very neat. My friend informs me, though, that he can't get them working. I haven't tried yet, but basically normal IDE controllers don't cut it. He had 16-bit I/O cards (16-bit ISA physical format) that are supposed to work with 'em, but again, he's had no luck. I was wondering if you guys have seen these.. Do they hook up to sound cards? Should these ISA cards work for 'em? Should normal IDE controllers work?

It's a 1993 Mitsumi CRMC-LU005S.

Thanks.

BTW - I know I've been gone for quite a while, I've been busy, but hey guys, I'm back. :D
Click to expand...

I've got one of these as well. Not sure if it is the same model, but it is just like you describe. It is not ATAPI. Though it has a 40-pin IDE-like interface. It has its own ISA interface card to make it work.
 
I remember when that drive came out - one of the very first available, if I recall. I believe the way it operates (correct me if I'm wrong) is that you pull the whole drive forward (as if you're pulling it out of your PC case!) in order to place/remove the CD.

I have a very early Mitsumi drive too, but it's the FX-001D, a double speed, more traditional motorized tray loading drive with a 16bit ISA (non-IDE) controller card.
 
My first PC, a 486, had this Mitsumi drive. Boy was it SLOW. It was 1X, but the seek speed was pitiful. It came as part of a kit that included an ATI Stereo F/X sound card which had a Mitsumi interface on it and some software from The Software Toolworks (The Animals!, Grolier's 1993, and some enhanced edutainment titles).

These drives were XT compatible in theory. I have a Mitsumi/Sony/MKE interface card from Sun-Moon-Star that was 8-bit ISA.
 
That was my very first CDROM and it set me back about $350.00 IIRC. At that time (1993 or so?) I was rocking a tricked out 386 with a 50 MB hard-card. What I remember best was some fellow who was developing an OS/2 driver for the Mitsumi and actually succeeded. At that time I was into some news groups via MindSpring dial-up and was part of a OS/2 on-line cult, so everyone shared what ever resources they had.
 
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1993 is a good guess, Agent Orange. My drive is manufactured Feb 1993 and the drivers are from 1992 (can't remember the dates atm). It's alot slower than my 2X SCSI Sony caddy drive (CDU-561), but it does read CD-R media without issues. You press inwards to get the drive to "unlock" before the whole thing can be dragged out. You then open the lid to access the disc. Slide it back in untill you hear it "click".

Haven't seen any performance differences with using the software driver compared to the driver which requires a DMA/IRQ channel on my 486 DX4 100. The latter driver eats up 57kb of precious DOS memory with standard config! The bad thing about the software driver is that it takes a longer time to load during boot, but makes up for it with requiring only 10kb memory.
 
Sorry for bumping a very old thread, I just had to scour the internet for hours to find the documentation for the 74-1645A ISA controller card for this Mitsumi drive. Basically, the IO settings are very hard to figure out without it. I found the manual and IO switch settings for a very similar card (Mitsumi 74-1881A), and it seems to be what I needed, though I still can't get my drive to work. It just doesn't seem to want to do anything. When I pull the drive out and slide it back in the busy light blinks once when its nearly closed. If I keep wiggling it in and out at that point it keeps flashing at the same point. I never hear any motor sounds or get anything from the busy light when I try to access the drive though.

Any ideas what could be wrong? I actually have three of these drives. So far, two do the same thing, so I'm not sure what it would be.

Anyway, the reason I bumped this thread was to provide the default IO switch settings for the 74-1881A so that anyone who finds this thread later on for that card or for the 74-1645A will be able to have some kind of documentation to work with.

mitsumi_ioswitch.jpg
 
Well, just the basics of old cdrom drives, the laser has to return to the home position next to the spindle and then the lens does a hunt to detect media before it will spin.
The lens will get cloudy with dust and can be cleaned with a small q-tip and eyeglass cleaner. Just be gentle. The rails could be sticky preventing the laser from traveling.
Sometimes there is a small belt to move the tray in/out. If the tray doesn't fully load in, nothing else will happen. Of course you need old style media too, not cdrw or probably not cdr discs.

Larry G
 
Okay, so after dismantling one of the drives, cleaning rails, cleaning contacts, cleaning everything and putting it back together... it still won't read game disks from 1995. It just makes some slight spinning and clicking noises, and gives some errors.

So, just for kicks, I threw in a brand new CD (from 2014), loading "playcd.exe" that came with the drivers... and it played! I plugged a set of speakers into the headphone jack on the front of the drive and it sounds fantastic! No problems whatsoever.

Any ideas as to why I wouldn't be able to read data disks? All I'm doing is putting the disk in the drive, going to D: and typing dir and on some disks I get CDR101: Not ready reading drive D. Abort, Retry, Fail. When I choose fail it says there's no volume label for drive D. When I choose fail again I get "Fail on INT 24". With other disks I get "CDR103: CDROM not High Sierra or ISO-9660 format reading drive D" .

All of the disks I've tried so far are PC game disks from 1995 and 1994 (Star Trek: A Final Unity, Alien Logic, etc.). I really don't think I have anything older than that.

I've read a little bit about the error but haven't come up with much. Is it possible that DOS 6.22 (and its version of MSCDEX) is just not capable of handling a drive this old and non-standard?
 
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Ozzuneoj said:
Okay, so after dismantling one of the drives, cleaning rails, cleaning contacts, cleaning everything and putting it back together... it still won't read game disks from 1995. It just makes some slight spinning and clicking noises, and gives some errors.

So, just for kicks, I threw in a brand new CD (from 2014), loading "playcd.exe" that came with the drivers... and it played! I plugged a set of speakers into the headphone jack on the front of the drive and it sounds fantastic! No problems whatsoever.
Click to expand...

Do the circa '94/'95 discs read in any other drive? If they've been stored "improperly", I'd suspect some degree deterioration has occurred (i.e. Disc Rot) to the point they won't read in your older drive (but maybe not to the point they wouldn't read in a newer one). See link below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
 
I'm curios, how much did you payed for this beauties?
I wish me one, but in the place where I live (Romania) I don't think I can find one.
 
Tnanks, but I got too look in Europe for one. From U.S.A. to Romania the postage can cost as much as the unit...
I found a lot of nice stuff in U.S.A., but the transportation cost kills your dreams.
 
Hey Ryan,

I haven't used it in 20+ years and I haven't tested it lately either. If that works for you let's work something out.
 
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