ext.cdrw question

[suitcase]

My neice has bought a MicroSolution backpack cdrw. It won't work. The back of the drive has what looks like two paralell ports, one marked computer, one printer. Plus what looks like a mini firewire. The cord is usb on the other end. I can't get the pc to recognize the drive. It's a Compaq PII with 128mb ram. There should be enough hdd space. Add/remove shows the driver loaded but I don't find it in device manager. It isn't listed in "my computer" either. How exactly is it supposed to be connected to the pc?

[Iman74]

Do the following, assuming your usb plug, the port on the cdrom and your usb ports on the PC working then what I would is have the PC powered up, have the cdrom on, then plug in the device, it should atleast see a new piece of hardware. If you get that far you are in good shape. Let us know if you do get this far.

[glc]

http://www.micro-solutions.com/tech_support/docs/2670.html

[suitcase]

thanks for the advice guys. I didn't know but she said she had a fellow that builds PCs try to get it working to no avail. I see that he has downloaded the 32-bit driver mentioned in the link glc. Theres alot of other info in the link that I'm looking at. It has Win98, and she only has 13%resources free. But thats several thousand mbs of space so that should be plenty to write a song to cd. I couldn't get the pc to recognize the drive but she said that it would work but before it finished writing a song it would stop and retries locked the pc up. There's a ton of stuff running in the back ground. I did what Inman said and device manager says, under usb controller, unknown usb device. In "my comp" it lists the HDD, removable Disk (D:), (E:). So, I assume windows is seeing the drive but when I put a disk in and hit open it says D: is not accessable. The device is not ready. Why does the writer connect to the the Printer port on the PC and the printer, and USB? I tried to print earlier but it wouldn't till I unplugged and plugged it back in. I know this alot of mixed up info but I'm writing as I think of what I've done.

[glc]

Hmm - my backpack came packed with 3 separate cables - mine is a "Triple Play" model. The 3 cables all have a parallel connector at one end - to plug into the "Computer" jack on the backpack - and the other end is either parallel, USB, or PCMCIA.

If yours is a single cable with a parallel on one end and multiple connectors on the other, you plug the end with the single parallel into the "Computer" jack on the backpack and then plug ONE of the connectors into the computer - *either* parallel, USB, or whatever.

So - the end result should be this, however you have to make it happen - leave the printer plugged into the computer's parallel port, plug the backpack cable into the "Computer" port on the backpack, then plug the USB end of that cable into the computer's USB port.

[suitcase]

Thanks for the help glc. I'll describe exactly how the device is connected. It is a backpack cd-rewriter 40X12X48 model #194215. On the back it has the following ports listed as; power, computer (parallel), printer (parallel), sound, USB. I don't know what cords came with it but it is connected as listed above with the one parallel cord going to the port on the PC and the other one going to the printer. The USB port actually looks like the mini firewire and the cord has that on one end and regular USB on the other. It is connected as such. The sound port looks like regular mine plug and it isn't connected. I've downloaded the 32-bit driver from the link you gave me and installed it. In device manager under USB controller it has the yellow exclamation mark and says unknown device. I can print but it still wont access the drive to read or write. Could the software be corrupted?

[glc]

Use EITHER the parallel cable OR the USB cable - NOT BOTH.

Apparently with the USB 2.0 capability they put a direct USB port on the drive instead of using an adapter off the parallel port. Disconnect the parallel cable and plug the printer back into the computer - or unplug the USB cable. USB is going to be better and faster than parallel. I'm assuming the computer is VERY confused with both interfaces connected, and this is why you are having problems.

The purpose of the sound cable is only to play audio CD's in the backpack, it would connect to the "line in" jack of the sound card if you need that capability.

The only reason to use the parallel interface is if the computer doesn't have USB or if you need DOS support for the drive - USB only works in Windows and in this case, with Win98 and newer - it doesn't work with the Win 95 flavor of USB.

Expect max burn speeds of 4x on parallel and 6x on USB 1.1 - you only get 40x with USB 2.0. If you buy the PCMCIA adapter from Micro Solutions, you can burn at 8x.

[suitcase]

Thanks again glc. I reinstalled all the software and drivers that came on the setup disk, removed all cables and started over. The downloaded drivers were actually older than the ones that came with the drive. Directions call for the software to be installed before the drive is hooked up. There seems to be a particular sequence to make all the connections. Power to drive, power to source, parallel to drive, parallel to PC. When I went to backpack finder it showed up for the first time. Then they tried it and it worked, so they are satisfied. I'm not sure if it will work with just the usb cable, I didn't try it. Since they are satisfied I'm gonna leave well enough alone. Thanks for all the help.