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Installing a CD-ROM in an IBM PS/2 57

itsvince725

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Nov 26, 2016
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I have an IBM PS/2 57 and I'd like to add a CD-ROM drive internally, as the cable necessary to attach one externally is impossible to find for a sane price. Obviously I need some kind of sled to mount it properly but other than that, is there anything stopping me from just using any 50pin SCSI CD-ROM drive?
 
All SCSI CD-ROM drives I have seen include a label showing what ID the jumpers will generate. Unless you have a second hard drive or other SCSI device, any value other than 0 will work. The booting hard drive was traditionally set to 0. Some CD drives were set to SCSI ID of 3 by default. The only device that didn't accept any of the 8 IDs was the SCSI Zip drive which could only use either ID of 5 or 6, IIRC.
 
All SCSI CD-ROM drives I have seen include a label showing what ID the jumpers will generate. Unless you have a second hard drive or other SCSI device, any value other than 0 will work. The booting hard drive was traditionally set to 0. Some CD drives were set to SCSI ID of 3 by default. The only device that didn't accept any of the 8 IDs was the SCSI Zip drive which could only use either ID of 5 or 6, IIRC.
Oh I'm sorry, I don't mean the ID, I mean stuff like the block size and termination.
 
Termination goes with which ever drive is last on the cable. Given the stiff nature of SCSI cables, that may not be the drive expected. Looking at the 57 design, the hard drive may have to be cabled before the CD-ROM because running up and then down again would leave the cable trying to push through the cable.

Sector size should be 2048 bytes for the PC which most CD-ROM drives had as a default. Finding a drive with 512 bytes sector for Unix use was often more difficult.
 
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