Greetings!
LGR here with an LGR thing
and today, I would like to put a CD-ROM
connected to this Compaq Pressario 425
which.. now my favorite computers.
It's an all in one design
I've had it longer than I had any of my other PCs
And yeah, It's very yellow but I kinda like it like that
It was.. It's just gotten yellow over time
no smoking or anything.
I had it for more than half it's life
So, err.. yeah here's the thing
I.. erf.. it only has a 3.5 inches floppy drive right there
and that the only way that you can get data onto this thing
unless you connect it to a network.
You need to pretty much.. get an external CD-ROM
and that's what I've done here
with this "Backpack CD-Rewriter"
I found this at Goodwill years ago
I mean like..
I dunno men
8 or 9 years now probably
And hum, so far I don't know...
I just haven't..
I just haven't.. erf..
really thought about it too much
until recently when I had this thing out
and I'm like
and I'm like "Dang I still never installed that CD-ROM drive"
So.. I got this!
Hum.. just the package, downloaded it, burned it down to a floppy disk
.. and here we go!
I'm going to plug-it in to the Compaq
And *hope* that this works.
This particular drive wasn't actually listed on the compatible stuff for this software, so.. we'll see.
Huh.
Well..?
I dunno if..
Maybe it turn on when the computer turns on
'coz the.. light on the power supply itself is on.
We will see.
I would assume I would have power already.
Yeah this computer is awesome.
It's actually from my High School.
Computer class was getting rid of a bunch of old computers
I mean they were..
.. like 10 years old at the time.
Now they're.. much older obviously.
Cool!
Let's just install the disk.
Okay.
Install the software!
*Dutudu..
*Dutudu.. tudu!*
"Restart your computer by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL"
Okay, whatever.
Alright.
So it has loader the driver there, that's looking good.
And.. it just..
Ookay..
So it's set as drive D: which is cool
Yeah..
Yeah.. so..
I guess this thing is just not getting power, somehow.
Let's...
Here that's why it ended up at Goodwill
aha!
I'll only just make sure that somehow there's not like..
*clickety-click*
*TOK*
some software that opens it or someth..
Nah! That wouldn't make any sense
I'm just gonna look around in there anyway
It says a Backpack drive is available
but that could just be seeing it's own driver.
Hum.. screw this.
We're just gonna.. open this up, and..
see what's inside, 'coz maybe..
something's just wrong, and if anything
if it's like other external CD drives I used in the past
it's just a normal drive in there
with like a little board in there and...
theingz in there..
einther nhernher
And this brings back some memories
trying to get the CD drive working in this computer
Err.. we've set up like..
a dozen of theses Presarios
Oh I did, really, It was sort of my "job"
Err.. working for the computer department in the high school back then, so...
I would have to set up these things, yep...
It's a pretty simple little..
relatively toolless system for opening, guys
It's just these little pins inside here
Here we go!
Simple enough.
Shield here...
Some oxidization, it looks like
Hi there!
Huh.
Alright, well ha..
It's about what I expected, it's..
just like a standard IDE like ATAPI
Yeah a CD-ROM, you got the power supply connecting that little bit there
The power supply is external of course
but this is where it connects to it
Huh... IDE connector, you got the 4-pin to 4-pin audio there for sound
Heh! Some little bug egg or some kind right there
At this point I think what I'm going to do is..
try an external power supply of another type
and just hook it directly to here, bypass this board
see if the drive itself is gonna do anything
and if it doesn't do anything then I'll just replace the drive with another one
I'll also try to switch this cable to this other little port here
and see it that does anything.
Alright, so I've got it connected to the other port
on the board there to get power and...
Heh!
Nothing.
Well that eliminated one thing.
Alright! So it is the next morning
I had to go out and grab a couple things..
..to test some stuff here
and I just got this external power supply here
which is just kinda normal, like molex connector
and we're gonna try this.. hum..
without messing with any of the internal circuitry
and see if the drive is like..
powering on to an external drive or a power supply.
And if it does..
then there's something wrong sith the board.
If not, then we might just have a dead drive.
Ehe!
Yeah it's... just not.. doing anything.
So I'll give you an example here
Here's just another drive
I'm probably gonna replace this one with this one
That's just a standard.. CD-ROM.
If I plug-in the power there..
Yeah...
So.. that's what we should be getting with this
but we're not.
So I'm just going to assume that this is dead and..
I don't know. Maybe I'll do something with it another time
but honestly, I'll probably just recycle it
Just as a test of this board though I'm gonna plug it back in
and then plug-it in to.. err.. this here
Yeah!
Alright.
So the circuitry here is perfectly fine..
at least the power portion of it is
And that's it!
Just 4 screws, and.. slides right on out of there
what is this thing?
It's a Mitsumi, January 2001.
Gonna replace it with this.. Compaq unit
which is.. 32 speed, one January.. or sorry July 1999
it's when this one was put together so.. err..
I get this, right?
So I was over at my office's computer parts, and what not
and I found.. heh!
The drive that I actually wanted to hook-up to this in the first place
This is a.. you know, much older version of the Backpack.. err.. external CD-ROM drive
quad speed, this is perfect for.. this.
I mean like era, it's appropriate and aesthetically it's appropriate
Otherwise it's like the same kinda thing
It has a nifty on/off switch though.
Yeah.. while anyway I'm still gonna repair this one
and see if I can get it working
because now I'm just on a mission from god!
Sweet!
Humm simple enough..
Hmm, so hopefully this cable goes back in the same spot
'coz the ports aren't always.. in the same spot on the back of every CD drives.
I didn't even checked before hand.
*whoops*
Thankfully it's an about the same spot, so that's good.
I did check to see if 4-pin was compatible with this 'coz sometimes..
different drives have different pinouts
but this is a later drive, so I figured it would, and it does.
And this is for the CD audio.
And.. normally this is gonna plug-in to a sound card
but it says this is external
it actually has this CD audio output right here
normal 3.5mm audio jack.
And for a quick power on test..
everything should be fine now.
Sweet!
I kinda wanna scrape some of that rust off of there, hum..
Yeah, totally not necessary but it makes me feel better
I mean it's smooth.. ow godness..
As I was saying anyway it's nice and smooth now
and that just.. makes me feel better.
Heh!
I love how simple that is to reassemble.
And, err.. yeah!
I mean that looks.. good!
Colors are about the same, and everything.
Sweet!
Let's try this thing out!
I know someone is gonna ask, like you know
what about Zip Drives?
Well, I've got plans for the future..
err.. sooo, yeah!
No Zip Drives today, but you know..
a CD drive in a way is still more versatile than a Zip Drive
because if I want to get stuff over to this
then I can just write a CD really quick
whereas with the Zip..
I mean I can mess with USB once..
but I.. it's.. just.. it's.. I don't wanna do that...
I'm gonna go for "SimCity 2000 Special Edition"!
Okay it's reading!
.. it's trying to!
Really slowly..
pleeaase work...
Huh?
That was a little slower than I.. thought it would
but it did *read*
That's cool!
I'm curious it's going to see it in Windows
or if I'm gonna have to do anything extra for that...
Nah! It sees it just fine, that's awesome!
Well, let's install Simcity 2000 for Windows!
Yeeeah!
I have not seen a CD load from this computer in like... 15 years, maybe?
Even though this is a 32x CD-ROM
you'll notice that it's actually installing very slowly
as for a couple reasons: one it's going over parallel
and two it's just a slow old hard drive in there too
but honestly most of that is probably because of the parallel connection
it's not known for being fast.
'coz if I was going to install the SCSI card in there
err.. the controller that would allow me to use a SCSI CD drive in an external fashion
that would be a lot faster
but this... I mean.. it's.. yeah, what you're gonna do
And the setup is complete!
Noice!
Close all this crap down..
See what we geet
Oh yeah got a test for that display..
Aha, yes!
Alright, so we've got that.. video running
this comes straight off of the CD-ROM
I can see the light flashing like crazy over there
It is a little slow to respond, but again I think that is..
just the parallel port being.. silly
*kaboom*
It's Maxis Man, here to save the day in Barcelona!
.. except no, he's not.
'coz we're gonna quit!
Hehe!
Alright!
Err.. one more thing I wanna try here is CD audio
With this though I think I'm gonna have to do it in DOS
because...
I have this Creative..
Yeah it's saying that the MSCDEX or CD-ROM is not found...
installed or whatever.
This is the software that the Sound Blaster 16 uses for CD drives
But I think that has to be like connected to the Sound Blaster itself, so!
We are gonna run the DOS CD player.
I know I actually.. don't have audio CDs on hand
but I do have a copy of Extreme PaintBrawl
and this has a.. Red Book CD audio
Eh this is just sad, this is the worst thing to test
M'kay.. we got track play here.. err..
this is apparently how we do it?
Aha! So this actually shows the tracks that are on there
and track 1 is always gonna be data for these mixed modes CDs
so that's the game data
The "game", or horrible game
and err.. tracks 2 to 7 are the audio, so..
It is now playing track 2
but because of that audio port on the back
not being plugged-in to like anything
I'm gonna have to plug-in the speakers directly to the CD drive
*magnificent laugh*
The music is supposed to sound like that, believe it or not
It is one of the worst games sound tracks ever
But it's working!
God!
I wish it wasn't working...
Well that's the Backpack CD-ROM, the later version
that used to be a CD-RW, working on my Compaq Presario 425
I love this computer. I have that music.
But I love this computer, and hum...
That's a pretty cool thing to have fixed, I think, I dunno...
On the other hand, I.. err.. really wish that I had found my older one first
and didn't have to go through all troubles, but whatever!
At least this one now is working
and I hope that it made a halfway entertaining video, at least.
And if you'd like more videos on LGR, then you're on the LGR channel so that's where you're gonna find 'em!
There's new ones every monday and friday and all that kinda stuff, so..
do what you will!
And as always, thank you very much for watching!