Help please. I have Old CD-ROMs that can't be read…need suggestions

[jk2gs]

I have a SheepShaver installation on a Mojave volume which I haven’t used for some time but I gave it a try to see if if would recognize my LG drive but the disc did not mount. I don’t know if that is an issue with the program or the LG drive being a Blu-ray burner. I don’t think I ever tried it with CD’s as it was more of an experiment to see how SheepShaver worked on my Mac Mini.

[Shamino (David C.)]

Looks like this is a known problem.

@Setting up SheepShaver for OSX/macOS

https://emaculation.com/doku.php/sheepshaver_mac_os_x_setup

CD-ROMs: Up to Mac OS X 10.7, physical CD-ROMs can be mounted within SheepShaver. Just insert the CD on the host system and the CD will be mounted on the guest desktop. OS X 10.8 and later prevents mounting of physical CD-ROMs in SheepShaver but disk images created from CD-ROMs will work fine.

This seems to definitely be the case on my system (Big Sur). If there is no disc in the drive, SheepShaver doesn’t recognize anything when I insert a disc. If I insert an HFS disc before launching SheepShaver, the MacOS within (9.0.4, in my case) pops up a dialog telling me that it can’t read the disc and asks me to initialize or eject it.

I haven’t tried running SheepShaver on Linux or Windows to see if it might work differently on those platforms.

[ron8 (bocaboy)]

If you can finally get to your images, take a look at Graphic Converter. It’s a Swiss Army knife of graphic software for Mac. I’ve used it for years and recently used it to recover some old photos on a CD saved in an old Kodak format. It worked perfectly.

[oldluddite (William Hamlin)]

For the Medical CDs you might try the free version of OsiriX, aka ‘trial’, but you can use it for free. Works very well on Big Sur and I haven’t had it have any problems with CDs from 6-7 years ago. In fact, you can have it store all the images from these CDs for your own viewing/comparison. https://www.osirix-viewer.com

[solidfuel_crawf (Charles Crawford)]

Thank you! I used Graphic Converter many years ago. You’re right. It’s a great tool!
With warm regard,
Chuck

[solidfuel_crawf (Charles Crawford)]

Thank you William! I appreciate your suggestion. While I don’t have any medical CDs, perhaps it would work well with other types of material/content.

With warm regard,
Chuck

[Nalarider]

@oldluddite

For the Medical CDs you might try the free version of OsiriX, aka ‘trial’, but you can use it for free.

I used the free ‘trial’ (Lite) version of OsiriX for years and was very satisfied with it. You don’t get access to many of the sophisticated ‘gee whiz’ features when you use the free version, but I didn’t need them and I was happy using it. That is, until I had a complex MRI that contained more than 500 images in one series, which as I found out, is a limitation in Osirix. After searching I found Horos, another free medical DICOM viewer which functions very much like Osirix. This web page provides a good comparison of the two. I’ve been happy using Horos to view my medical imaging on CDs and DVDs.

[solidfuel_crawf (Charles Crawford)]

Thanks jk2gs. I’m awash in soltutions and very grateful everyone’s contribution. Yours seems staight forward which certainly appeals to me. Thank you!