Here's the deal, I don't normally work on a lot of Macintosh, but I had a customer come in with an old LCIII CD-Rom. The one in the external scsi bay that requires a caddy. Well, the drive was bad. I figured it was just a regular SCSI CD-Rom in the bay so I told her I could replace it. I replaced the drive and I can't get the OS to see the CD Rom. It seems like it wants to boot off it as it boots, but the OS won't load the extension. I've tried reinstalling the OS and the Apple CDRom software. As the machine is booting it does not load the Apple CD-Rom Extension. Any suggestions?

You need third party drivers like FWB CD Toolkit for a drive other than an Apple drive.

Yes, I'd agree with bobw's suggestions. I have had some success with a CD ROM driver called CD-Sunrise which is freeware. It claims to work with any CD ROM drive but does not have audio CD or ISO support. It can be downloaded here: http://www.euronet.nl/users/ernstoud/cdrom.html

No no no.... I will give you the "Apple" CD-ROM Extension before they removed support for all 3rd party CD-ROMS I have it archived at home. Just E-mail me if you really want it. No 3rd party software is required. Using a 3rd party CD-ROM driver is NOT a good idea.

Here's the link to Version 5.3.2 of the Apple CD-ROM driver. It will work with any SCSI CD-ROM. Shame on Apple for killing it! http://www.macdrivermuseum.com/disk/Mac_CD-ROM_Setup_5.3.2.sit Please dont forget to unstuff it :)

i might even be 5.3.1, check on the same webpage.

Yes, Apple CD ROM is certainly worth trying, although from experience I know that it does not work with all CD ROM drives. It is also available for D/L via the link I gave earlier. CD-Sunrise works well especially for older/obscure drives despite its limited scope.