Usb to parallel adapter recognition

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I have an iMac running os 10.9.4 and am trying to access data off of a 20 year old Fujitsu NuDesign 230 mb optical drive. I have purchased a usb to parallel adapter, which connects this device to my mac, but my mac doesn't recognize it. I have looked under System Information, Hardware, USB, and do not see the device. Any ideas on how I can get this to work?
 

chscag

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The drive will need a disk inserted before it's recognized. That's how OS X works. This assumes that the interface adapter is OK.
 
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Are you sure that's parallel and not SCSI?
 
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I did have it connected with an optical disk in it, but it still did not recognize it. I believe that the ports on the back of the optical drive are scsi, but I have a scsi to parallel cable that I am using. So I am going scsi to parallel, parallel to usb.
 

Slydude

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I did have it connected with an optical disk in it, but it still did not recognize it. I believe that the ports on the back of the optical drive are scsi, but I have a scsi to parallel cable that I am using. So I am going scsi to parallel, parallel to usb.

I bet the odds of that working are very slim at best. Essentially you are working through three types of connections USB, parallel, and SCSI). There were USB to SCSI adapters and USB to parallel adapters but if I recall correctly many have not worked well since about OS X 10.2.

Your best bet is probably to find an older machine with SCSI and transfer the files there first. From there you can move the files to a flash drive or network the older Mac with a newer one.
 
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the ports on the back of the optical drive are scsi, but I have a scsi to parallel cable that I am using. So I am going scsi to parallel, parallel to usb.

Like the commercial (e-surance) says - that's not how it works. SCSI and parallel aren't compatible, even though the connector (DB-25) may look the same.
 

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