[rescue] Bad luck with SCSI cdrom drives

[wa2egp at att.net]

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Jonathan Groll <lists at groll.co.za>
>
> I now own 5 SCSI CDROM drives, and only have one Toshiba drive that
> actually works in all of my sun gear. Granted, all of these drives have
> been bought second hand with machines that are typical rescue machines,
> and some of these drives will work up until a point until the sense
> errors start to occur (Yes, SCSI ID and block size has been set
> correctly), but I fear I must come to the conclusion that the technology
> is simply poorly designed, or that older drives struggle to read modern
> CDR media. Perhaps I must learn to ignore all the old warning labels and
> open some drives up to see if I can clean lenses etc. Luckily, most
> machines will netboot fine, and the only real problem child I have is
> freebsd which I haven't managed to successfully netinstall.
> 
> I would like to know if my experience of one out of five working drives
> is atypical for this list?

Depends on where you get the drives.  A few years ago I bought a big box
of drives at a ham radio fleamarket and only got two out of about twelve
drives that work.  Was Ok considering I paid only $20 for the box. :)

Bob