[Ham-Mac] Superdrive problems

[David Kelly]

On Dec 10, 2005, at 9:08 AM, Scott Galbraith wrote:

> Hey guys,
>   I have a Pioneer DVD SuperDrive in my mirror dual G4 that has  
> suddenly stopped responding to any type of CD put in it about a  
> month (maybe 2) ago. It will still open/close under computer  
> control, but that is the extent of it. If I "load" a CD, it closes,  
> but never spins up or makes any effort to read or mount the disc.

If you were to disconnect the drive completely from the control cable  
and leave power connected it should spin the disc automatically on  
insert. Sometimes these things happen but I suspect your drive is dead.

http://www.macsales.com/ offers Pioneer DVR-110D bare drives for $55  
and claims in one place "Compatible with any Power Macintosh G3, G4  
or G5 system with an IDE interface." Then in another expands that to  
"Patching this drive for support under Mac OS X is possible using  
Christian Moller's PatchBurn Software, located here." This is the  
link to the item:
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Pioneer/DVR110DBK/

If PatchBurn is anything like previous versions all it does is hack  
the drive identifier of your "unsupported" device into the supported  
list. I did the same thing for a Sony CD-RW drive on G4-400 back in  
10.2 days. In other words, "There are drives other than the Pioneer  
from MacSales which work." If I get bored I have a LiteOn DL DVD-RW  
that I could try transplanting into my MDD. I don't expect the DL  
feature to work without 3rd party software support but "so what? Most  
anything would be better than existing 1x writes."

If buying from MacSales I'd consider a bundle including Retrospect:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/optical-drives/superdrives/powermac/

--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly at HiWAAY.net
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Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.