Use DVD-RAM like external HFS SCSI HDDs on 68k Macs, possible?

[dreunion61]

Computer: Quadra 840av
Drive: Panasonic LF-D201 in external SCSI case.

Formatting with the usual utilities is not possible. Tried on 7.6 and 8.1. The System detects an empty drive but when trying the format it comes with an write protect error on the OS utility. The drive is detected as 0B.

Others like FW HD Toolkit, Lido and drive7 just don't detect the inserted DVD-RAM at all. They detect it as a CD-ROM drive. Also tried DVD-RAM TuneUp, the drive isn't detected there.

When burning an HFS CD-ROM disc image to a DVD-RAM, it does work fine like any other CD-ROM. But I want to use DVD-RAM discs like Zip floppies or HDDs. Is that possible?

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I also tried to create an HFS image in Cider Press 2 and then burned it directly to the DVD-RAM via ImgBurn. I also tried to directly dd it to the DVD-RAM like an HDD image. Didn't also work.

 

[chuck.dubuque]

DVDRAM support did not come to Mac until 8.6, which is after the point where 68k Macs were no longer supported (MacOS 8.1 was the last version that booted on 68k). There have been efforts to get later versions of MacOS to boot on 68k, but DVDRAM support was supplied by a driver extension and I doubt they created it as a fat binary.

 

[dreunion61]

I see but what is he talking about?

Removable media, which is better

I've always known about the zip drive. I remember how useful it was. How we had 2 drives die to the "click of death". The whole nine yards. Long story short, I've been using an new ide 250mb drive and a scsi 100mb drive to transfer files between my ibm system and mac. However, this weekend...

68kmla.org

Apparently he likes to use DVD-RAM on 68k macs?

 

[chuck.dubuque]

Reading through, it looks like he was able to burn a DVDRAM (on another computer?) and maybe read it on a 68k Mac with the DVD driver that comes with 8.1, but it doesn't say that he actually burned the disks on a 68k machine. Sort of like how you can read a CD-R or CD-RW on most CD drives even if the drive and/or the computer do not support burning CDs.

What you are looking for is a combination of hardware (the DVDRAM SCSI drive), firmware (on the DVDRAM itself which supports various compatibility forwards and backwards), native OS support (8.1 has DVD and UDF support from Apple, 8.6 is where you get DVDRAM/RW support from Apple), maybe 3rd party driver support that brings in capabilities to 68k machines, software support for burning by session or some of the software that allowed you to mount a DVDRAM and read/write to it as if were a disk with support for DVDRAM with 68k driver and software support. There might be some combo that works (hence the author of that post talking about keeping his unobtanium DVDRAM SCSI drive sealed and safe), but probably a lot of combos that do not work or semi-work.

TL;DR, the full capability that you are looking for did not become mainstream on Mac until iMacs started shipping with DVDRAM drives. CDRW came to iMacs with early 2001 iMac G3/500. DVD burners came in 2002 with flat panel iMac G4. The last 68k macs were discontinued in 1996.