VOGONS


First post, by argniest

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Hello all

Been reading about CR-563 and CR-563-B cd rom drives

Been looking around for information about these two 2x cd rom drives from the mid 1990's
I am wondering if anyone knows if they are compatible with each other?

Also I have read that possibly both would be compatible with the 3DO blaster?

Can anyone point me to some specs about these drives?

THANKS

Reply 1 of 10, by darry

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I have never seen or heard of a CR-563 without the B suffix . The CR-562-B and CR-563-B were quite common OEM drives around 1993 to 1995 and shared very similar specs (except maybe for the 3DO part).
From memory, I believe the random seek time was around 300 milliseconds . The interface used required no DMA or IRQ , but used a software polling mechanism that apparently used up to 40% of the CPU (I could not say on which platform that was or how it scaled on faster CPUs). I used one well into mid 1998 .

Reply 2 of 10, by argniest

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Here is something I saw posted about this drive and the 3DO Blaster:
Seems like this CR-563-B would be compatible with the 3DO Blaster mythical system
3DOKid wrote:This abomination is my 3DO Blaster system. (Shown here running Starblade)
Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread

1 x Cooler Master Lab chassis
1 x Creative Labs 3DO Blaster
1 x Creative Labs Sound Blaster
1 x Creative Labs CDROM CR-563-b
1 x SuperMicro P6SBA Motherboard
1 x 256Mb RAM
1 x 500Gb HDD cut into teeny-weeny little partitions
1 x Floppy Disk Drive
1 x Pentium III 450Mhz CPU
1 x ATI Mach64 (1Mb) which QEMM has just beaten up
Windows 3.11 / DOS 6.22

Reply 3 of 10, by argniest

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I also would like to hook up the CR-563-B to a soundblaster CT1600 ISA card. But dont have the cable. I can see they look like the 40 pin IDE cable would fit there. But I think the pins are reversed? So what if I would swap the cable (pin 1 to 40, and then pin 40 to pin 1 on the other side of the connection?). Or could I just hookup the IDE cable between the CT1600 soundblaster card and the CR-563-B....just like any other IDE device I would normally hook up?

Thanks

Reply 4 of 10, by Plasma

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Yes, you can use a standard 40-pin IDE cable with MKE/Panasonic drives like the CR563B.

Reply 5 of 10, by argniest

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Do I have to reverse the pins (basically hookup cable backwards on one side of the connection?)

Thanks for info

Reply 7 of 10, by argniest

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is there anyway to move this thread to a different section?

Reply 9 of 10, by Plasma

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argniest wrote:

Do I have to reverse the pins (basically hookup cable backwards on one side of the connection?)

Thanks for info

Align the red stripe with pin 1 on both sides, just like an IDE connection.

Reply 10 of 10, by Stiletto

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Moved to Marvin -> General Old Hardware.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto