[NBLUG/talk] HP CD Writer

[Alan Bloom]

It works!  But I had to cheat.

After many hours of study I think I kind of figured out how to get the
HP 7500 external CD writer interfaced over its parallel printer
interface.  It would involve installing several modules in the kernel
and making the device drivers.  And then re-doing that every time I
update to a new version.

Instead, I took a suggestion from Bill Marlin and opened the CD writer
case:  Inside was a standard IDE drive connected via an interface board
to the rear-panel parallel printer connector.  I just removed the drive,
installed it in a spare bay in the computer and the next time I booted
up Linux, it recognized the new drive automagically.  Thanks Bill!

A few details:  The ribbon cable to my old CD-ROM drive already had a
spare 40-pin connector to connect to the "new" CD writer and there was a
spare 4-pin power connector available as well.  (It's best not to
connect the CD writer to the IDE cable that goes to the hard disc since
that slows down data transfers from hard disc to CD writer.)  I left the
audio cable to the sound card connected to the old CD-ROM.  I checked
that the old drive had its jumper set to master and the new drive set to
slave.




On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 17:17, Alan Bloom wrote:
> I'm a Linux newbie.  I finally saw the light and installed Fedora on my
> old computer.  I've got everything installed and working (including the
> internal Win modem!) except for the external CD writer.  It's an HP
> CD-Writer Plus 7500e that interfaces through the parallel printer port. 
> I've spent hours searching through the Fedora documentation and the
> Internet and still can't figure out how to make it work.  I found a
> similar question on
> LinuxQuestions.org:                                                                                                    
> "dnewman5:  ... I have an HP CD-Writer Plus 7500 that I would like to
> use as backup media.  Is there a way I can configure this CD writer to
> talk to redhat?  Is there drivers available for this thing?..."
> 
> "no2nt:  There are no drivers for this particular thing.  The linux
> kernel will recognize the burner as a cdrom and you'll need to use a
> program like cdrecord to burn data to a disk.  Your 7500 is compatible."
> 
> And he gives URLs for "CD Writing HOW-TO" and a download site for
> cdrecord.
> 
> The cdrecord program is already installed.  If I type "cdrecord
> -scanbus" it says "cdrecord: No such file or directory.  Cannot open
> 'dev/pg'.  Cannot open SCSI driver."
>  
> To get a list of transport drivers I typed "cdrecord dev=help" and one
> of the four devices listed is "Transport name: pg, Transport descr: SCSI
> transport for ATAPI over Parallel Port"
> 
> So I assume pg is what I want.  But what exactly do I do to get my
> parallel-port CD writer to be recognised?
> 
> Alan "Clueless in Santa Rosa"
>                                                                                                     
> 
> 
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