2 optical drives on a powermac G4?

I see 2 optical drive 'doors' on the front of my G4.
I use only one (CD - DVD)
What is the other one for?

Ok, got it now. It is ready for a 2nd drive but doesn't have a drive.
Right.
Why would people need 2 optical drives?
Lots of reasons. I can be burning a disc while I'm ripping a CD into iTunes; replicating a disc for backups; reading multiple data discs without having to disc-swap... only limited by your imagination.
-Douggo

Similar Messages

Can I replace the intern optical drive in my Power Mac G4 by one of other G4

Can I replace the optical drive in my powermac G4(sernr.CK135JGJL4Y) (Sony CD-RW CRX155E) 16 speed write by the one off a two year older model power mac G4 mirrored drive doors (sernr.CK3380F1PC4) with has a combo drive ( dvd rom read 8x,cd-r write 16x)? At the motherboard is notated IDE near connection of my mac.My optical drive is defect. External drives are not for sale, compatibel to OS 9.2.1 The operating system of the other one is OS 9.2.2

there was a way to add support for some later Opticals in OS9, but I can't rember just how now.
There are modified device plugins here.

Compatability of optical drive, PowerMac to Mac Pro

I have a PowerMac G5 that I am no longer using. I now use a Mac Pro, I think it's 1.1. Would the SuperDrive from the Mac Pro work in my PowerMac? If so, how do I remove it? (I know how to put it into the PowerMac)

Hi,
G5s used IDE/ATAPI opticals, Mac Pros use SATA Opticals.
Might work with the right adapter...
http://www.walmart.com/ip/28879969?wmlspartner=wlpa&adid=22222222227019472865&wl 0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=55380887409&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=87884735889&veh=sem
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232004
Optical drive removal/install on G5..
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/powermac_g5_opt/
Mac Pro Optical drives...
http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=249&type=Internal%20Optical%2 0Drives&sort=pop

Where do I find mounting screws for a PowerMac G5 1.6 Ghz optical drive?

I bought a used PowerMac G5 without the optical drive. I have a drive to install but I need the screws to mount the drive in the drive bay properly. I'm sure that somebody makes these and I don't have any idea of where to look. I think they are ISO threaded screws (metric) but I'm not sure if a 'normal' PV repair shop would have them. The nearest Apple repair center is in Bloomington, IN, where I bought this great new, to me, machine. They didn't have any hardware to mount the drive. Thanks for any help in this matter.

The hex head screws are M3x3.
For "non-Sony" drives:
http://www.welovemacs.com/9226305.html
http://www.macfixit.com.au/shop/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=2116
Both Phillips and Hex on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=optical+drive+screw+apple
Phillips head are for Sony drives, Hex is for most others.

Stuck optical drive door, PowerMac G5Quad.

This is related to the recent thread about the optical drive in a G5Quad but different enough to warrant a new topic (I think):
BDAqua wrote: Slide the door cover down with your fingers…
FOLLOW-UP question re a stuck door cover:
What does one do when the door cover won't budge in any direction?
In my case, I can hear the drive itself opening when I press the Eject button attempting to get the tray open in order to insert a CD or DVD, the tray travels a very short distance, hits the back of the immovable door and promptly retracts right back. There's no disk in it. So, the drive mechanism itself would appear to be OK, but the door itself cannot be manually budged, in, out, up or down.
The machine was badly damaged in transit. The enclosure is a lost wreck, but the computer works otherwise.
Thanks in advance.

BDAqua wrote:
Nice delivery job, was that United Catapult Delivery service they used!?
Anyway, the door only moves down, you may have to use a butterknife or such to pry it down, or open it andsee what you can unbend or do.
Thank you!
Bending was the key. Ruthless bending outwards of the opening in the cheese-grater grill around the opening.
Now that area matches the front feet cosmetically. …and I have a fully functional if ugly-looking PowerMac G5 Quad.
This confirms what I said not too long ago about your advice and help being 100% correct—all the time.
I was able to find a reasonably priced spare G5-Quad enclosure from a well-rated Amazon Marketplace merchant, and that should be arriving anytime in the next ten days.
Now I'll try getting an estimate from a local independent repair shop as to how much it's going to cost to transfer all the innards from the damaged enclosure into the other one.
Thank you once again.

Will all PATA internal optical drives work with a Powermac G5?

Will all PATA internal optical drives work with a G5 Powermac?

Many, but probably not all, here's one that will...
http://eshop.macsales.com/static_pages/Framework.cfm?page=superdrive/sdl_powerma c_g5.html

Is it possible to use an internal optical drive/ZIP drive mount from a PowerMac G4 Graphite in a PowerMac G4 Quicksilver?

Hello, All. Is it possible to use an internal optical drive/ZIP drive mount from a Power Mac G4 Graphite (Sawtooth) in a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver? Obviously, the two computers use physicly different mounts, but does anyone have any tips or hints to make this possible? I appreciate any advice.

"I may be persistent and attempt to drill holes in the correct position in the front of the Quicksilver chassis."
Unfortunately, it's more than a case of drilling a couple of holes. The modification isn't really feasible, and after you remove the front panel from the Quicksilver case, you'll see what I mean. In the Optical/Zip drive area, the Quicksilver's front chassis wall isn't cut out the same way as previous models were. Prior to the Quicksilver models, the front plastic bezel (with the hinged Optical drive door and a blank or Zip-slotted bezel) was snapped in from the front, after the front panel was installed. The chassis wall had a large opening to accommodate installation/removal of the Optical and Zip drive carrier. As I indicated before, in the Quicksilver model, the Optical and Zip drive carrier is mounted internally. This is necessary because the front chassis wall has two separate openings cut in it. The upper opening is for the oval-shaped, hinged Optical drive door (snaps into place from the interior of the chassis) and the lower opening is a narrow slot for Zip disk insertion and the eject button. To use the Optical and Zip drive carrier from a Sawtooth G4 would require cutting the Quicksilver's front chassis wall, to create an opening large enough for the carrier. In doing this, you'd cut away the metal which has (7) small holes in it, through which the hinged door assembly's plastic mounting pins are inserted to properly position and secure it in place. If you don't want to lose the use of the hinged optical drive door, including the appearance of a seamless front panel, you can't cut away that metal. If you don't care about having a permanent oval opening in the front panel in front of the optical drive, you could attempt your modification. Because the Quicksilver's optical drive typically needs to have the trim piece unsnapped from the front of its tray, I'd want to retain the front panel's hinged door bezel to prevent excessive dust from entering the drive. As I recommended before, check ebay for a pulled carrier.

Optical drive....dead or software issue? How can I tell?

I'm using a PowerMac G5 with OS 10.4.11. Recently I routinely went to put a DVD-R into the drive to copy some archived files for a client, and it froze. I restarted, drive wouldn't work or eject. I got the disc out using the "paperclip" hole on the drive, but now, the drive isn't even showing up in the System Profiler. When I go to ATA in the Hardware section it says "no information found." The eject button doesn't work on my keyboard either.
I've tried taking the drive out and cleaning it, and tried to use the Hardware Test that came on my G5 disc but it won't work. I also booted from a system disc on my backup external Firewire CD drive and ran Disk Utility/repair disk, and it did some repair but the darned Optical drive is still showing as "no information found."
I've since ordered a new drive and I'm waiting for it to arrive, but is there any way for me to tell if this is a software/OS X issue, or if it's a hardware one?

I just wanted to add that this just happened to me on my G5,I put in a store bought CD and noticed it did not show up on the desk,so I decided to eject and I would not. I tried the paper clip method and it opened it a bit but not enough. Then I discovered on reboot that the drive was not even a choice any more.I still tried to get the disc to eject and finally did,somehow,now I am afraid to insert anything in my Super drive,what is going on I wonder. The system did not even see the drive until I forced it open then everything looks fine. I find it too unusual we would both be having the same issues,I dunno.
Check that: I did insert my Leopard install disc and on the next reboot ran Disc Utility,everything worked fine there,eject and everything!

Optical drive picks and chooses when it will work

For some reason, the optical drive on our Mac has been acting weird for about 3 months. It will only read my husband's games (Civ IV and Command and Conquer). It won't read any of our kids' games, my CDs, or any of our backup CD-Roms. It also won't burn any CD-roms. I haven't checked recently, but a couple of weeks ago my 7 y.old was watching Harry Potter on it, so I guess the DVD function still works.
I'm assuming that we need a new drive. Space on my desk is at a premium, so I'd like to find something internal rather than external. I don't burn disks very often--usually just backup disks and photos a few times a year. We don't burn DVDs, at least not yet!
Is my hypothesis correct in that the drive is kaput? If so, what should I look for in a new drive? Are there any especially good drives? And is an internal drive a good choice (assuming that external drives come with more bells and whistles)?
I have installed memory upgrades several times over the years , so I'm pretty comfortable working inside a Mac. (Eeep, 1st Mac Love was in 1988 <--dating myself). Is this a job that I could do myself?
Any help is welcome!
Thank you--
Jane Healy
Machine information:
PowerMac G4 with dual 867 MHz processors, 1 MB L3 cache per processor, 1.75 GB DDR SDRAM and using OS 10.4.9.
Here's the info on the drive:
PHILIPS CDD5101:
Firmware Revision: A4.2
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 8192 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-Raw
Media: No
PowerMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Sure sounds dead to me. If it won't play or record at all, that's a very bad sign. The lens cleaning trick may work, but you should have noticed a lot of skipping before it got to the point you are at now if it was just the lens. But that's definitely what you want to do first, to be sure.
Installing an optical drive is not difficult. OWC has a great series of videos on how to do so at this link: http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/installation.cfm
Pioneer drives are very popular with Macs and for good reason. The current version is the 112, and has received generally good reviews (OWC carries the 112, although New Egg has a cheaper price. Both are bare drives - not retail versions, but you can just reuse the screws and cables you have). xlr8yourmac maintains a user database of people's experiences with different drives in different machines at this link:
http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/search.drivedb.lasso
It's an excellent source of info. If you want to go with a retail package, it will cost more. Best Buy carries the 112, but Pioneer gives it a different number in the retail version (it's the 1810).The retail package will give you some windows software and screws and a cable. Now that I think of it, I don't know if your machine has a 40 or 80 wire cable; you'd need the latter to get full dvd burning speed from the drive. If you want to go external, I just got a Samsung 184 and it works beautifully, on sale at Best Buy but sale ends today. A combo drive like the Philips will only run about $10 cheaper than a dvd burner.
Look to spend about $40 for a bare drive, $65 for a boxed version, $80 to $100 for an external.
mac pro, dual 1.25 g4 Mac OS X (10.4.9) dell 9200, dell xps 400

I own PSE 7 on disc. The laptop it was loaded on died. My new laptop doesn't have an optical drive so I downloaded PSE 7 from the Adobe site. It downloaded fine but I cannot start using it until I enter a S/N. The S/N on the disc box doesn't work.

I own PSE 7 on disc. The laptop it was loaded on died. My new laptop doesn't have an optical drive so I downloaded PSE 7 from the Adobe site. It downloaded fine but I cannot start using it until I enter a S/N. The S/N on the disc box doesn't work.

Those links weren't particularly helpful to me. They convinced me to install the drivers for my USB 2.0 card, but that didn't make a difference. Still no OS X without a PRAM reset if I've dared to venture into OS 9.
It's always been my understanding that an unblessed System Folder will not be selectable in OS 9's Startup Disk control panel. My folders are blessed and healthy. Of course I'm running 9.2.2, as stated in my first message. I also frequently verify and repair my disks and permissions.
I did a verbose startup of OS X, and noticed something funny about "ATY...too old." Perhaps this problem is related? I ventured into my system.log file and there it was, repeated over and over, everytime I've booted this computer:
Aug 8 18:30:24 localhost kernel: From path: "/pci/@d/pci-ata@1/ata-4@0/disk@0:10,\mach_kernel", Waiting on <dict ID="0"><key>IOPathMatch</key><string ID="1">IODeviceTree:/pci/@d/pci-ata@1/ata-4@0/@0:10</string></dict>
Aug 8 18:30:35 localhost kernel: ROM ndrv for ATY,Rage128y is too old (0xb3383430)
Aug 8 18:30:41 localhost init: kernel security level changed from 0 to 1
Anyone know how to interpret that? Is it related to my problem? I googled it, and all I found was a web board of people arguing over whether the Apple installed stock ATI Rage video card that came in the G3's is appropriate for Panther. The Ye's have it as far as I'm concerned...as long as I leave OS 9 alone, my video is fine on this computer!
14" iBook G3 800, B&W PowerMac G3 350, Mac Classic II 16 :-P Mac OS X (10.3.9) System 7 Rocked!

G5 using Macbook as an external optical drive

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone knows if it is possible to use a macbook as an external optical drive for a G5 powermac to update the system software?
My optical drive on the G5 no longer spins discs for some reason.
I was thinking it might be possible to use a firewire and mount it as an external drive with the CD inside.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Hi Jaaniekregg, and a warm welcome to the forums!
If your MacBook has Firewire & you have a cable, then boot the MacBook into Target Mode, connect the two via Firewire, boot the G5 with the option key held down & you should be able to select the DVD in the MacBook to boot the G5 from.

Older enclosure issues w/newer optical drive

Hello All,
Bought an LG GH22NP21 dvd burner and it works fine as an internal in my powermac g5 1.6, but I want to make it work in my old Lacie enclosure. The enclosure is one of the old ones with a fan that housed the original superdrives (in this case dvr104) and connects by FW 400. The enclosure will run the new LG in some cases but has some behavior that makes it a no go (intermittently not being recognized by host computers, won't burn to some sorts of media). It seems that the enclosure is causing the issues.
Anyone have any ideas of how to 'update' an old enclosure like this work on a newer optical drive? I've searched for firmware updates but can't seem to even find the enclosure/product on the web, let alone an actual firmware update. Possibly it's not the firmware that's lacking? Maybe the actual chipboard? I'd love to use this enclosure.
Any light shed on what makes an enclosure compatible with a newer drive would be much appreciated! (Or conversely what makes an enclosure NOT work)
Thanks in advance.
Szucc

Jeff et al,
Sorry for the delays in posts and the resulting stop-and-go nature. Appreciate very much the thoughts and help.
Actually the G5's FW400 is indeed in question as I'm having an issue with Digital Performer that may or may not have to do with the FW card/bus. When editing and mixing (with my audio interface and the data hard drive connected by FW400) I get stopped, routinely, by the colored pinwheel. But the culprit is not yet known and I'm trying many tests; FW may not be the issue at all. But I must find the answer as I can't work with this happening and clients in here are put at disadvantage.
But, with regard to the optical drive, the issue (at least of the failed burning to dvd-r) happens when the drive is connected to 2 different computers, so it's unlikely an issue with the firewire ports/busses/cards on the computers.
So yes, it should be an issue with the old Lacie ENCLOSURE. But is it the firewire bridge? The jury may still be out because I've reinstalled the original optical drive (dvr 104) in the enclosure and the drive is recognized immediately by my G5 (whereas the LG drive inside Lacie would NEVER be recognized). So that points to an adverse interaction between the old enclosure and this newer drive.
My next step, I suppose, would be to try burning to dvd-r with the dvr104 inside the Lacie. If that fails, then, yes, it could very likely be the FW bridge. But if it succeeds then maybe it's the chipset [for lack of better term]? IE: the enclosure itself just simply cannot support this newer LG drive.
So my question is: What makes an enclosure "not support a newer or particular drive"? Is a FW enclosure NOT simply a housing with a power supply and a firewire bridge? Is it much more than that? And what specifically is under the hood that makes an enclosure "more than that"...?
Would LOVE to understand that better.
Thanks again for any thoughts.
Will try burning to dvd-r with the old/original dvr104 back in the enclosure and report back.
szucc

Odd optical drive issue

I have a PowerMac G5 (PowerMac7,3) OS 10.5.8. My problem has existed over multiple operating systems which leads me to believe a hardware issue has arose.
My problem:
I wish to insert a disk into the optical drive. I press the eject button on the keyboard, nothing happens. I press and hold the eject button and the tray pops out then emediatlty retracts. I repeat the eject button press and it does the same thing. The only way I can get digital media in to that drive is to grab the tray when it slides out and hold it long enough to drop the media into it and then let it go. The drive works just fine by way of reading and writing. Ejecting the media also gives me the same fight.
What can I do in order to remedy this issue.
Thanks.

Might try this...
On your main hard drive, dig down into System > Library > CoreServices > Menu Extras. Inside that window, double-click on the icon called Eject.menu.
http://www.creativetechs.com/tips/quicktips_51.html
Menubar will now show an eject symbol.

MBP Optical Drive Speeds...

I have a MacBook Pro 2.33GHz (Core2) with a HL-DT-ST-DVDRW GWA4080MA (AE38). I've been noticing that this drive is pretty **** slow. Since I couldn't find benchmarking programs for Mac, I ran Nero CD/DVD speed tests in Windows XP (BootCamp).
CD Read = 8x
DVD Read = 1.1x
CD Burn (using different brand discs at 40x and 52x) = 8x (to start, but slowed down as it progressed)
I am an Apple fan, but for $2500, I should not have an optical drive that's only slightly faster than my iBook from 2001. What gives?

Interestingly enough, tried another 52x using Toast rather than the finder. It had me at 10x, eventually going to 11x, eventually jumping to 20x, and then flip-flopped from 20x to 21x for the remainder of the 700mb burn. Really. Is this normal? Am I seeing a normal 24x Superdrive (CD-R) at work here? My PowerMac G5's burner seems faster and it, too, is rated at 24x.
Pretty soon, I'll be racing my MBP against another MBP of the same model and see what's up.

Optical Drive Standoffsour

I am stuck. I have a PowerMac G5. The original Sony optical drive stopped reading DVD's, so I purchased a replacement drive. The tray on the replacement drive hits the top of the computer case. Yes, I did remove the bezel as instructed. The problem is the "standoffs", 4 special screws located on the bottom of the drive which latch into the fittings in the case. The standoffs that were on my Sony are too tall, and I cannot obtain the shorter ones required. I was unable to find a Sony replacement drive, both Pioneer and Samsung offer replacement drives, but both require the shorter "torqx bit" standoffs. The Apple store in SLC does not sell parts to consumers. No Apple service centers in SLC have the standoffs. Apple customer support acknowledges the requirement of the shorter standoffs, but does not sell them separately. I am out of ideas other than contact my local television station to do a piece on the ridiculous situation. Come on Apple, this is not the way to treat your customers. Please help me.

Is this what you need? I think you need hex head, not Torx, however. The Sony standoffs should be Phillips.
http://www.welovemacs.com/9226305.html

2 optical drives on a powermac G4?

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