No idea on the SCSI card itself, but I don't see why it would be a problem to power up the CD7 unit. If something doesn't work right, then open it up and take a look. Worst case scenario it's damaged or doesn't work, but it looks in good shape from the outside in your photos. Performance-wise, I doubt it'd be great at 2X, but it's nifty, so why not?

I don't think it has to be plugged into this exact SCSI card, do you? If it works, I'd try it with newer adaptec PCI cards.

Generally I would recommend to use a PCI SCSI card (a friend of mine once used an Adaptec ISA card together with a fast Plextor CD writer - Burnproof kicked in all the time), but then 2x CD speed equals ~300kB/sec so the controller shouldn't be the bottleneck. The CPU utilization is probably higher with an ISA card which might matter in Windows. OTOH the card and the changer are guaranteed to work together so you won't run into compatibility problems.

@obobskivich: you're right, only way to find out if the CD7 works is to plug it in and hit the power switch. Will do that when I get some more free time.

@RacoonRider & idspispopd: I could just go with the ISA SCSI card, but I'm also curious to see how the CD7 performs with a PCI card. Maybe I'll try both and see which is best.

I've edited the thread title as well, makes it easier to see what it's about 😊

Had a chance to plug in and power up the CD7 and to my surprise, it works!

YES!!! \^^/ Can't believe it still wakes up from a 14-year slumber as if nothing ever happened 😁

Here's a (very crappy) short video I made of the CD7 powering up, opening/closing the loading tray for each CD slot, and powering down:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv621ldhaytzjlu/CD7_test.mp4?dl=0

I also took a couple of pics of the software floppies and CD:

The top 2 floppies are for the CD7 drivers and CD PATHfinder software. The bottom 2 belong to the TMC-1680 - the floppy to the bottom right had a blank label, but as soon as I saw what it was I labeled it to avoid possible confusions. The CD has PowerSCSI! applications.

Now that I know the CD7 works I'll start reading the manuals to see how to get it up and running in my Socket 7 build; the TMC-1680 ISA SCSI card will go in first - after I check the jumper block to make sure there are no conflicts or loose ends 😊

After many delays and false starts (it's been almost a year already? 😮 ), I was finally able to do some testing of the CD7.

I first tried the Future Domain TMC-1680 ISA SCSI card. Setting the jumper block was easy; installing drivers was a bit laborious (had to do a New Hardware search for Windows 95 to find the card and add the CD7 DOS ASPI drivers manually). I succeeded and got everything to work, but my Socket 7 PC slowed down quite a bit. Not a good sign 😦 . I only installed the PowerSCSI! DOS 4.1 drivers from the floppy; I did not install anything from the CD (everything there is for Windows 3.x anyway).

Next I installed the Diamond Fire Port 40.

Much easier this time, Windows 95 found it right away and asked for drivers (still had to add the CD7 DOS drivers manually). With this setup working I saw the computer return back to normal performance levels; CD access was a bit odd however - sometimes the CD7 would stop and retry reading the inserted CD for no apparent reason. Hmm 😒

Last but not least, the Adaptec AVA-2906.

Since this SCSI card has a 25-pin external connector (the Fire Port 40 and TMC-1680 have 50-pin connectors) I had to get a different SCSI cable to match. Installing drivers was pretty much the same as the Diamond card, but operation and performance of the CD7 appeared to be much better - got up to speed a bit faster and didn't stop/retry to read any CDs. Very nice 😊

So why did I have to add the CD7 DOS ASPI drivers by hand? Because the setup program couldn't do it. For some unknown reason it kept telling me to add needed entries to both Autoexec.bat and Config.sys, which I did; after a reboot, the CD7 was fully accessible and functional. Incidentally, both CD7 floppies actually have drivers and utilities; the first floppy has standard drivers that list each drive slot with a single letter (7 drive letters in total); the CD PATHfinder floppy has a driver that creates a single drive letter and lists the 7 drive slots as virtual directories; each CD gets listed and associated with the slot it was used in last in this manner. It's a neat way of saving drive letter usage and while it works well enough with productivity and media applications, it's not very compatible with games (Warcraft 2 and Whiplash complained constantly about not finding the CD, Creature Shock lost track of where the CDs were 😖 ). The utilities are meant for Windows 3.x and did not try them. As for the CD7's performance, it's what I expected of a 2x CD-ROM drive - not very fast, but steady and spot-on (FMV games do have issues like skipping and freezing); it is noisy however because of the tray loading system (it is also very fast to load/unload a tray).

Before I started testing the CD changer curiosity got the best of me and compelled me to open it to see what it was like inside. The CD7 has 5 screws holding the top cover, 2 on each side and one on the back; they were very tight, but some gentle persuasion with a Phillips screwdriver got them loose. Here's what I saw:

This thing is jam packed, there's hardly any empty space left! That explains its weight (almost 4lbs 😮). Most of the space is taken up by the slot loading mechanism; I did spot a couple of fuses and some large capacitors at the back.

(Sorry if the pics are not very good, it's very difficult to take them in such enclosed areas)

As interesting as it was to test the CD7, I can't use it on a daily basis. I don't have a permanent area to keep it plugged in, is cumbersome to setup externally and fairly large to keep around.

These pics show how big the CD7 is; since I don't have the room, I'll have to go back in storage for the time being. It was neat to have up to 7 CDs available all the time however; if my current living arrangements change in the future and I get more space, I might consider having it around with my Socket 7 PC in a more permanent setting. We'll see.

P.S.: I made images of the CD7 floppies, PowerSCSI! floppies (WinImage 5) and CD (Imgburn) and uploaded them to my Dropbox account. Here are the links for anyone that wants them.

Mountain CD7 CD-ROM changer drivers & utilities (two 1.44mb floppy images):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jg27gr5q5vkrvbg/CD7_FDI.ZIP?dl=0

Future Domain PowerSCSI! drivers (two 1.44mb floppy images):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o0bl55kg0q0dg0t/FDPS_FDI.ZIP?dl=0

Future Domain PowerSCSI! bonus software (one 247mb CD-ROM bin/cue image, has two CD audio tracks):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/16iyyujgoka92yq/FDPS_CDI.ZIP?dl=0

In case anyone is wondering I don't have a VOGONS Driver Library account, and at this point I don't expect to ever get one. Sorry 😐

Does it play Phantasmagoria without having to swap CDs? 😁

hey, thanks for the drivers. I have a TMC-1680 SCSI card laying around I never bothered using but I may try it out now.

realnc wrote:

Does it play Phantasmagoria without having to swap CDs? 😁

I knew I forgot something ^^.

I don't have Phantasmagoria (a 7 CD game would be ideal to test the CD7 capabilities to its very limit); I did borrow The 11th Hour from an acquaintance and tried it out. The game could access all four CDs without swapping, but since it has FMV scenes it did show some performance issues - stuttering and skipping being the most common (even SCSI cannot overcome a 300 KB/sec access time limitation).

soviet conscript wrote:

hey, thanks for the drivers. I have a TMC-1680 SCSI card laying around I never bothered using but I may try it out now.

No problem 😀

That drive is even cooler than the Nakamichi changers.

gdjacobs wrote:

That drive is even cooler than the Nakamichi changers.

Judging by what's written on the back of the drive, it IS a Nakamichi changer. :p

I've got a HP C2987A which is basically a tower about the same size as PC only twice as heavy. No idea what I'm going to do with it but cant bring my self to get rid of it.
Basically its just a big tower that takes 7 SCSI CD or DVD-ROM's. Although if connected to the network it brings up funny windows authentication errors when trying to access a drive in anything above Windows NT/9x. I want to try adding SCSI hard drives and seeing if that works (still stuck on the OS limit though)