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IO-DATA CDBOX

I found this at Beep in Akihabara in the junk pile whilst in Tokyo a few weeks back. It had a label saying "No Power", but I couldn't resist after all the effort I'd spent in the past on 110-pin junk for PC98.

At first glance, it could just be a box containing an CD drive... but flipping around to the back shows some interesting ports! CRT in and out seems to imply there's a window accelerator inside? There's also a C-BUS slot!

The switches underneath definitely indicate that there's a window accelerator. Opening up the unit shows that it's Cirrus Logic-based.

No Power?

The power supply inside smelled fishy, so it was (at least) time to replace some capacitors. I removed and re-inserted a few of the caps, as they didn't seem too bad. I replaced three that I felt were suspect, but the daughter-board only let out a sad squeak/sigh when power was applied.

The wiring between the power supply and the main unit seems to have 12v, 5v and a blue line to power up the relay which is probably something like a power-good signal. The voltages were all non-existent... so I decided to go the sneaky route.

Thanks to PC-standards, we know the pinout of the molex power to the CD unit, so let's just use a splitter and inject +12/+5v there via a Pico ATX supply.

Ok, it works. The LED even lights, meaning the power is flowing into the bus appropriately from this connector!

Installing It

In true IO-DATA style, the drivers are still available on their site. And, of course, in true IO-DATA style, the archives only contain updates to disks you're already meant to own. Fortunately, the archives can be expanded in 7-zip. Inside you'll find all the drivers you need.

The Matsushita version of the CD-ROM Driver was installed (there's a Creative driver there too!) and the Atlas CD was read...

To the point where it even wanted to install...

Using the original power supply

I heard the relay on the board switch when the attached notebook was turned on. It then occurred to me that the "junk" "no power" status was probably a lie. I bet the shopkeepers had just plugged the unit into the wall and not actually tested with a laptop connected. It turns out that the laptop needed to be connected AND powered-on for the relay to throw and the power flow from the internal power supply. Otherwise you'd get nothing. If you do have a totally dead power supply, this is the pin-out:

Note that 5v is on the orange wires and gets two wires. 12v is the red wire and only needs one wire. Finally, the power supply is switched by the blue wire. When the power supply sees the -12v from the Notebook then it'll engage and provide +5 and +12.