Weren't these connectors pretty standard for the longest time? I know that eventually the black one became more common, but I've definitely seen these on lots of other drives. The cables often came with dual heads to accomadate both.

The CR-583B is also not that quirky for a proprietary drive.

The problem seems to be that all of the cable connectors I've seen are keyed on the top, but the connector on this drive appears to be keyed on the sides.

I think it was one like that I took a 3.5 floppy power connector, trimmed the key on top of it with side cutters, and soldered that on the end.

y2k_survivor wrote on 2021-11-11, 04:44:

This year I did my first retro build, a 486 inspired by LGR's "Woodgrain" PC. I have a Sound Blaster Pro 2 installed, which is connected to a CR-563-B CD-ROM drive. This setup is a little quirky, but it works basically fine; the one thing I can't figure out is what kind of audio cable the CD drive takes. I've tried three different cables, including a universal cable with four different plugs on the end, and none of them fit. Do I need some weird proprietary cable to go with my weird proprietary CD drive?

It's proprietary, but not uncommon. IIRC this is THE cable you need to connect SB Pro 2 with an early (pre-ATAPI) Panasonic CD-ROM:

The left one with slit-like holes and keyed corners goes to the drive, while the right one with square holes and keyed sides goes to SB Pro 2.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-11-11, 18:54:

I think it was one like that I took a 3.5 floppy power connector, trimmed the key on top of it with side cutters, and soldered that on the end.

Are you joking or intentionally misleading? Compare the sizes of respective connectors and cords:

Yes its that proprietary Panasonic connector: [SOLVED] CD Audio cable question&

I was able to obtain the cables on US eBay.

dormcat wrote on 2021-11-12, 06:35:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-11-11, 18:54:

I think it was one like that I took a 3.5 floppy power connector, trimmed the key on top of it with side cutters, and soldered that on the end.

Are you joking or intentionally misleading? Compare the sizes of respective connectors and cords:

IMG_20211112_144347.jpg

Yah I didn't pick the scale up from the pic, there's one type around that has the same pin pitch one end or the other that I used a floppy power plug for decades ago, was just mistaken. Would be nice if there was still a source of those "universal" CD audio cables around still that had three plugs on each end.

This was the information I need; I managed to find someone selling these cables on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/224475546704

Thanks, all!

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-11-11, 16:48:

The CR-583B is also not that quirky for a proprietary drive.

The quirks seem to be in the drivers. Random audio CDs don't play in DOS, but do play in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Files I've added to a CD-R after initially burning it don't show up in Windows 95. That sort of thing.

y2k_survivor wrote on 2021-11-13, 04:31:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-11-11, 16:48:

The CR-583B is also not that quirky for a proprietary drive.

The quirks seem to be in the drivers. Random audio CDs don't play in DOS, but do play in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Files I've added to a CD-R after initially burning it don't show up in Windows 95. That sort of thing.

Respectfully and IMHO, unless you have some kind of nostalgia specifically related to MKE interface drives, using a CR-563B (or a CR-562B) is almost an exercise in masochism .

The Creative/Panasonic (a.k.a Matsushita a.k.a MKE) 40-pin interface (not IDE) is a CPU hog because it uses software polling (NO IRQ required) to read data from CD-ROM media . Also, the CR-563-B is is a slow 2X drive (300 KB/second max) that predates recordable CD media (CD-R) availability and will most likely have issues with such media . Additionally they have known failure mode due to a relatively fragile plastic cog . matsushita cr-563-b behaviour query

My experience :

And with something both not likely designed with CD-R in mind and this old, adjustment of laser gain might be necessary if CD-R is to be readable at all (probably not good for laser longevity).

I once briefly setup and tested a makeshift CD tower running Linux (probably Slackware) and using 2x 40-pin cables (EDIT : with 4 drive connectors each), 2 MKE controllers and something like 6 or maybe even 8 CR-562-B and CR-563-B (I actually had more to be used as spares) drives (people were basically giving those drives away by then) . AFAICR, the ability to read a given CD-R disk varied greatly between drives with at least one working just fine and at least one not at all with most recognizing the CD-R but being marginal at reading it . I personally never went so far as to play with gain, simply gave up on the project and junked the drives .

Mostly summarized from : Can't find a way to connect a CR-562-B CD-ROM to via IDE connection

y2k_survivor wrote on 2021-11-13, 04:29:

This was the information I need; I managed to find someone selling these cables on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/224475546704

Thanks, all!

Take care that there are 4-pin and 3-pin "Panasonic" connectors. The one you need is the 4-pin one.

darry wrote on 2021-11-13, 05:07:

Respectfully and IMHO, unless you have some kind of nostalgia specifically related to MKE interface drives, using a CR-563B (or a CR-562B) is almost an exercise in masochism .

While I'm almost certain that our Packard Bell 486DX back in the day had an MKE drive (it was a 2x drive that came bundled with a Sound Blaster), that's not why I ended up doing this. I tried two ATAPI drives before I resorted to the CR-563B, and I erroneously concluded that my motherboard/BIOS didn't support ATAPI. I didn't realize that simply upgrading my IDE interface card to something more recent would have given me ATAPI drive support with a generic driver like oakcdrom.sys.

ATAPI is a software interface. If your system supports IDE, then it supports ATAPI with the appropriate driver.
In the past I have had issues with ATAPI drives set as primary slave. You can try adding a second controller in this situation to fix the problem.

CR-563B is only quirky by modern standards. By the standards of the early 90s, it was pretty normal. Yes, SCSI was better, but most people who had CD-ROM drives during the CD-ROM boom had LMSI, Mitsumi, MKE or SLCD proprietary interface drives and they were all slow with high CPU utilization. In my opinion the MKE was probably the most common of the bunch. Now this is what I'd call quirky: