• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

DEC RRD40 CD Drive broke?

iridis

New Member
Joined
Nov 14, 2022
Messages
4
Hi everyone, I need some help with this old CD Drive from VS3100. The drive is a CM201 from Laser Magnetic Storage International, connects to a SCSI controller via a single ribbon cable (images below). The drive does not seems to startup (it has a LED in front but never lit) although it can be detected as a SCSI device.

I am trying to find the culprit. There is also a LED on the controller, and it blinks, so it might work, but there is one chip that does not heat up. The drive has some DIP switches that I could not find anything online about. Any ideas?
 

Attachments

  • 9B00BC6F-432B-495C-8139-1899BE5E370F.jpeg
    9B00BC6F-432B-495C-8139-1899BE5E370F.jpeg
    4.3 MB · Views: 25
  • 17AA11D0-036A-4AE3-87AB-3B67A1980EFC.jpeg
    17AA11D0-036A-4AE3-87AB-3B67A1980EFC.jpeg
    3.7 MB · Views: 23
  • 58C36705-0BA9-4972-891E-7E5199CFBF27.jpeg
    58C36705-0BA9-4972-891E-7E5199CFBF27.jpeg
    4.7 MB · Views: 24
Last edited:
Wow. a SCSI to LMSI bridge board. I never knew that existed.
I am assuming you are trying to load a driver for the drive/bridge board, right? I don't think that just appears as a CD drive as-is.
 
The LED on the drive is only lit when a CD is inserted. If it does not, the drive is not working correctly.

These CM201 drives go bad easily, I assume you have no other way to test it? (LMSI card or soundcard with LMSI interface)
 
The LED on the drive is only lit when a CD is inserted. If it does not, the drive is not working correctly.

These CM201 drives go bad easily, I assume you have no other way to test it? (LMSI card or soundcard with LMSI interface)
For now it does not have a disk, but the drive does not show any movements, even when attempt to boot from it. I dont have any other LMSI devices.
I have part of the caddy, but missing the transparent sleeve, so I did not try to insert a disk into it.
 
Last edited:
Why would it when there's no disc inside? The way that drive works is very special. It uses a custom caddy that stays partly in the drive when a CD is inserted. That caddy also presses the "disc loaded" switch. With nothing loaded, the drive stays dead. This is normal.

ps: You have the caddy required for it, right? Otherwise, you can not do anything with it.
 
I have part of the caddy, but missing the transparent sleeve, so I did not try to insert a disk into it.
Btw, do you know the correct DIP switches?
 
If you can't get it to work perhaps you can find a native SCSI CD-ROM drive and use that instead. I'm assuming the VS3100 can work with one, although some CD-ROM drives can be configured for 512 byte sector access instead of 2048 byte, so that could play a factor.
 
Depending on where you are in the world I'm willing to bet I know someone who would trade you a really nice, tested and working SCSI CD drive for that.
 
I would trade that CM201 for a working SCSI CD-ROM, too. If you are in Europe and are interested, let me know.

But really the important question for now is if you have the caddy for the drive.
 
Here is some update: so I manually inserted the caddy "shoe" then a disc (very carefully) it actually works now. Then I connect it to a SUN and it even boot! Thanks for the help Timo!
 
Nice to hear it's still working. I have a CM-201 and four caddys on the way to me, too. :)
 
Back
Top