Mike's PCjr Page

Hi.
Has anyone here ever succeeded in getting a parallel port CDROM drive to work on the PCjr? After reading about using a parallel port Zip drive on this forum, I bought the Palmzip driver and got my Zip drive to work (albeit a bit slow) which allowed me to use it a hard drive and install a bunch of software on it.
I also happen to have a parallel port Backpack CDROM drive, and I tried it today on my PCjr (128K sidecar upgraded to 512K for a total of 640K - that was incredibly laborious - and a modified parallel port sidecar made bidirectional) using the DOS drivers (I use DOS 3.2), but the computer failed to recognize the drive... It would really be great if I could get it to work as it could act a large repository.

Walid

I got an early back pack CD rom drive to work on my PCjr with the jrExcelarator in it. It only worked at the 9.5 mHz settign on the clock.
If you want to get a CDrom to work your best bet is using one of the parrallel to scsi converter cables. You can then get a 2x or maybe a 3x CDrom drive to work.
I've used an NEC drive. If you think the zip drive is slow then you won't like the CD speeds.

I think I will shelve this for now. I may consider a parallel to SCSI interface at some point and try again.

Walid