[Ham-Mac] follow-up to my recent G4 problems

[harris ruben]

For those who may be interested, here's the outcome of my recent 
issues and what I did.

1. I bought a new 8X Superdrive from mcetech.com and installed it. 30 
minutes work.

2. Stuck some CDs in it and they showed up on the deskstop. Progress.

3. Rebooted successfully from my Norton Systemworks 2 CD, ran NUM and 
Speed Disk (defrag)

4. Tried to burn a CD and failed. Got the driver from MCEtech and 
installed it. Burn went just fine. The drive is a Pioneer, and they 
have new, separate drivers for 10.2.x and 10.3.x

5. Now I tried all the things that were screwed up on the Mac. First, 
I tried printing PDFs. No problem anymore.  Then -- I reinstalled my 
"dead" router, rebooted my cable modem, and -- BINGO! My network came 
back.

The interesting thing is that Norton apparently put everything back. 
TechTools4, which I ran at an Apple Store, didn't do squat. Of coure, 
I ran the Norton AFTER I installed the drive, so maybe that had 
something to do with it. What caused the problem? I'm just guessing, 
but the bad drive apparently messed up some software somehow. I dunno.

How did the drive go bad? My guess is the dust-blocked holes in the 
back of the Mac. Maybe overheating did it, and then, maybe it just 
died on its own. I dunno that, either. BUT, if your tower is near the 
floor, go crawling around and vacuum the back.

But my G4 and I now have a much closer, more intimate relationship. 
And I still wouldn't trade it for a PC.