[vcf-midatlantic] Can PD-1 LF-1094C drive read NeXT optical disk cartridges?

[Ian Primus]

No, it cannot. The formats are different, the cartridges are somewhat
different shapes, etc.

The NeXT optical disks are a bit of a special breed, you really need
the correct optical drive to read them. Those are starting to fail at
this point, but can be repaired. The problem, of course, is finding
the optical drive and cartridges to use in the first place.

-Ian

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 6:36 AM, Eric Rangell via vcf-midatlantic
<vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
> Hello all,
> I recently visited the Large Scale Systems Museum in New Kensington, PA, and one of the NeXT boxes had an optical drive.
> I have a Compaq Presario 9240 from the late 1990s which came with a PD-1 LF-1094C drive that is driven by an Opti Dual PCI IDE Controller on IRQ 14.
>
> Here is a picture of the optical drive with a cartridge:
> http://erangellcomblog.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/PD1drive.jpg <http://erangellcomblog.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/PD1drive.jpg>
>
> Does anyone think this drive can read the raw data from a NeXT cartridge so it can be saved somewhere else?
> I can bring it to an upcoming workshop if someone wants to hack on it.
>
> I will also be at the lecture by Alice Bowman on 2/24 at Infoage, so let me know if anyone is going and would like to meet up.
> Thanks,
> Eric Rangell
>