Ramdisk can't load when I try to manually install. Using Blue and white PowerMac G3. Tower

[hammish55]

When I try to load Ramdisk I get a error message " Failed to load RAMDISK : Invalid device name. " Any suggestions? Excuse my noob question.

[Wack0]

Is the cd drive showing up in the device list?

[hammish55]

Not sure how to view the device list. Please explain.

[hammish55]

I see the Hard drive and the CD drive after

[hammish55]

Any help to resolve this would me most helpful

[Wack0]

Does the same error show up every time you try to load the ramdisk? (by which I mean, try to load the ramdisk twice in a row without rebooting)

What optical drive are you using?

[hammish55]

Yes it does. I let NT run then it says can't find machine type. So from the list I go to OTHER and I press the enter button and it asks again. And repeats asking. I am using the OEM Apple cd-rom drive. I was thinking of swapping out to a more modern dvd-rw drive for testing. Also from the device list I never see the RAMDISK as being loaded.

[Wack0]

The invalid device name error would be consistent with the IDE/ATAPI driver failing to open the drive (so test unit ready/start unit/read capacity commands failing)... maybe I should look at open firmware's atapi driver to see what it does...

That said, the only Apple OEM optical drive I'm familiar with is the one that came with my Lombard which I had to replace due to it being unable to read parts of discs... it did work otherwise fine inside the ARC firmware though...

[Wack0]

OK, so when working on the uni-north port I found a slight issue with the ide driver, specifically the atapi side, on every access it sends test unit ready + start/stop unit (start) + read capacity, some drives dislike the repeated start/stop unit. The one in my snow will just spin back down when getting sent that, causing all disc reads to be very slow, I wouldn't be surprised if it causes other issues on other drives.

I will port the fix to grackle arcfw when I get time...