Apple Firmware Issues w/16x DVD+R's?

ALL:
I have an 8x superdrive in my G5 dual 1.8 ghz system. I know a while back Apple had potential firmware issues when you tried to burn a 4x or faster dvd in a 2x burner. Does anyone know of any compatibility issues putting a 16x DVD + or - R into an 8x superdrive.
Thank you in advance! -john

ah sorry, when i looked earlier, i thought it just
said "imac" for info. didn't know it was intel.
Boy!, and i nearly went thru w/ your initial advice too ! Even tho' Intel IS there in my info, i'm sure i don't list it in the accepted way, so. . . .
on the other hand, i see you registered 2 1/2 weeks before me and have racked up ! 1,083 ! posts ! in 7 weeks __that's a shade scary, and , having almost suffered from your "hasty diagnosis", i wonder if "speed don't serve need"
_Don't wanna' offend or be off-base here, but be careful with that hummingbird approach to "roadside assistance".
I will, however, try your 2nd approach as i understand it and am far less likely to mess THaT up ! --=thanks
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.7) Intel / 20 " / 2 GB Ram / "500" GB memory / LaCie 500 GB external. . .
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.6)
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Similar Messages

16x DVD-R Media and 106D Firmware Update??

I just picked up some Memorex 16x DVD-R discs and was wondering if there is a firmware update needed for the G5 Superdrive.
I checked for firmware updates here and could not find anything, but as I have found out in the past, this does not mean there isn't one.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Gary

Thanks for the reply Chris.
Just cause we're level 3 or 4 doesn't necessarily mean we know what we're talking about.
Ah, but the alter I have erected for level 3 & 4 promises all prayers are heard, if not answered....
I haven't tried the 16x media yet, but like 4x media and lower becoming extinct since the introduction of 8x, I am sure 16x media will dominate within a couple months. As such, I just wanted to make sure the new media was not going to frag my 4x Super drive.
I checked my drive through System Profiler and got the following:
Model:     PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D
Revision:     A606
Serial Number:     CHDL009866WL
Detachable Drive:     No
Protocol:     ATAPI
Unit Number:     0
Socket Type:     Internal
I checked out the latest update link you provided, but it does not say what the revision is, so I don't know if I have the most resent. Although I haven't had any issues the 4x Superdrive using 8x, I have had several failures with the 8x burner in a Pioneer 8x DVD Recorder set top unit.... same vender so I anticipate possible problems.
Anyway, thanks for the response.
Gary

Imac won't read my burned 16x DVD-r's - but reads 8x just fine?!?!

Hello.
I have been burning CD's and DVD's on my imac PowerPC G5 *(Burner: Pioneer DVD-RW DVR K04F)* for 2 years now with absolutely no problems. Historically, I've used 8x dvd-r's from many different brands and I use Popcorn burning software. Now suddenly, all the electronic stores are carrying only 16x dvd-r's, so I bought some (Maxell), but I don't think my imac likes them. I can burn a movie onto the 16x blank dvd-r using Popcorn and the burning process works fine, process completes without problem, etc. If I put the burned 16x dvd-r disc into my stand alone DVD player on my TV, it will play with no problems, but when I put any of these burned 16x discs back into my imac, the imac will spin it for 10 seconds and then spit it out. However, my imac continues to read/play any of my 8x dvd-r's or commercial dvd's without any problem. Also, no problems with cd-rs.
Anyone have any thoughts on what's happening here? I have cleaned the lens with one of those disc cleaners with the tiny brushes (I ran the cleaning process at least 10 times in a row just to make sure!). I also checked Pioneer's site and I see firmware updates for a handful of their dvd burners but nothing for the DVDR-K04 I have. I called Apple but sadly my AppleCare has expired, and their only advice was to run 'Software Update' but there's nothing in there regarding this issue. So I'm wondering if anyone here might have any suggestions or help?
Thanks for reading!!
BB

It could depend on what format the content is that is not readable - if you have access to the Windows machine, you could check on the format (and/or know the format if you burned it)? Is it just .jpeg's? Or did you make a slideshow resulting in an mpg2 possibly? In that case, you'd need to buy the MPEG2 Playback Component from the Apple Store (less than $20) because Quicktime can't read that format without the playback component.
Can the DVD be played in a regular DVD player?

Burning 16x DVDs (im)possible ?

Hello community,
I owe a G3 800 (PowerMac4,5) with a standard internal DVD burner. I burned DVDs (-R) for years. I recently bought a case of 16x DVD -R (Philips), and I am having problems at the beginning of session, with a double error message prompting that I could not print the DVD (the first time, the error message was even more precise, with something related to being unable to calibrate the laser etc...). I tried with another brand 16X DVD-R (Imation), and the same happens now. I do not have any left of my old 8X DVDs (the last one worked well a few days ago). I cannot find more on the market (Valencia, Spain) which apparently has switched to the 16X standard. On one box of these, I picked a warning message on the possibility for having to upgrade the firmwares of burner (intended to PC owners probably). CD Burning is unaffected. The problem happens with Toast, Disk-Utility as well as finder burning, although with different messages (I grabbed the Toast message images if needed).
OK, now my question: could it be that this only change from 8x to 16x is causing the trouble ? If yes, is there a solution (other than hunting for old stocks of 8x... ?).
Many thanks
Yvan
In case it helps, the tech data from my internal DVD (sorry I am French ! although living in Spain now...):
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 :
Révision du programme interne : A227
Interconnexion : ATAPI
Gestion de la gravure : Oui (livraison/gestion par Apple)
Cache : 2000 Ko
Lecture de DVD : Oui
CD gravables : -R, -RW
DVD gravables : -R, -RW
Protection contre la
sous-alimentation de la
mémoire tampon durant la
gravure de CD : Oui
Protection contre la
sous-alimentation de la
mémoire tampon durant la
gravure de DVD : Oui
Stratégies d’écriture : CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Données : Non

There are several different Manufactures of 16X DVD-R Media.
Not all will operate in the slower DVD burners, You already found that out.
You must buy the absolute best Media. Next you must read the packaging of the media you buy. You need to purchase 16X media that tells you on the packaging that it will burn at 1X,2X,4X,8X,and 16X.
Not all of them will.
I use Maxell 16X DVD-R in the individual Jewel Cases.
Many of these other manufactures will not burn at all the slower speeds and they also use other companies to manufacture there products.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm
Another suggestion, let the Software choose the burning speed.
Do not manually choose the burning speed.
Don

Updating of firmware for drive Optiarc DVD Rw AD-5680H

updating of firmware for drive Optiarc DVD Rw AD-5680H
it seems compulsory since burning of DVD Verbatim disks are failed
but successful with Verbatim DVD -RW
Mac Mini ,Mountain Lion etc
the drive of my PowerBook Pro
works well
Mashita DVD -R UJ -868
where can I find and download this updafe
THKS

Failure with one type of optical media and not another -- even from the same manufacturer -- is not unusual. DVDs and DVD-RWs use different dies that respond to different lasers in the optical drive. There are numerous other possibllities here.
It would not be unusual if the write laser for DVDs has burned out but the DVD-RW is still working becasue they use entirely separate lasers of a different intensity and frequency.
It may be the dyes used in a particular lot of Verbatim DVDs are not quite compatible with the DVD lasers in your drive (that is independent of DVD-RWs because they use different lasers.
Because of manufacturing variations your drive may burn other brands of DVD blanks flwlessly, but just won't work with Verbatim DVD blanks.
The DVD Read/Write lasers in your drive may simply be dirty.
Changing/updating the firmware in an optical can be done, but there is a definite risk of converting the optical drive into something useful only as a paper weight.
Try another brand of DVD blank or even a different model Verbatim. (I have seen cases where discs from a different manufacturing lot from the same vendor worked when another failed.)
If you are using DVD-R blanks try a DVD+R (there again different lasers are involved.
It is tricky to clean slot loading optical drives, but sometimes simply blowing them out with short bursts of canned air will work. Be sure the computer has been powered down for a good while and the optical drive is completely cooled. Then use only short bursts of air to prevent super cooled liquid air from getting into the drive. That can easily crack the lenses if you aren't careful.
If your Mac mini is less than a year old or you have Apple Care, get an appointment and take it to the Genius Desk of the nearest Apple store. If you aren't covered under warranty a bus powered external optical drive very probably costs less than the labor charge to diagnose the issue with your drive.

Matshita UJ-835F firmware issue and Leopard

I know this topic has been discussed for other Matshita drives, but how do I resolve this issue:
I'm trying to update to Snow Leopard on my iMac G5, however the Matshita DVD-R drive (UJ-835F) doesn't seem to recognize the disc and so it just spits it out after 30 seconds. I ran software update and it says that I need to upgrade my firmware for the Matshita DVD drive. After running the installer and rebooting it appears the the software has still yet to be solved. I of course tried this numerous times. I learned that the 2.0v firmware update is only compatible with tiger/panther via http://support.apple.com/kb/DL356 ...
Questions:
How do I update without downgrading my software?
Is a software downgrade possible?
Is anyone else having this issue with UJ-835
Any help/suggestions would be great!!!

Aha... I guess I missed the obvious answer. That's a bummer.
Does it make sense that the computer won't even read the DVD? It just spits it out. Is that a sign of a larger problem? Also, the computer won't seem to update to firmware v2.0 --- any ideas on that one?
Duane, much thanks for the help!

Will 16X DVD's work on iBook G4 with superdrice

I inadvertantly bought 50 16X DVD-R Upon opening it I found a disclaimer that said I would need to update my firmware or these DVD's wont work. Does anyone know anything about this, or am I just stuck with 50 DVD's that cant be used on my machine?
Thanks

Even though the DVD manufactures boast of reverse compatibility, this is, I am sorry to say is not always the case.
As you have aptly pointed out that along with the purchase of your DVD's you got the message to update your Firmware.
Again this will work some of the time and other times this is not an option.
It depends on the optical media that is in your Computer.
Matshita, Pioneer, etc offer Firmware updates in 3 different places. Apple offers updates, as well as the Manufactures Web site.
The last option is Google. Type in the name an model of your burner in and read the options available for firmware updates. You will find that those options offered by Open Source Developers are normally a better choice.
Reason is open source works so much better with Mac and the Unix Operating System.
This should help..
Although remember you could be possibly stuck with the 16X media, because only the absolute newest DVD burners will accept this media without firmware updates.
Don

Beige G3 boot from **** problem; open firmware issues; bad motherboard?

Dear all,
I'm having huge boot/startup problems with my beige G3 that had been happily running OSX 10.3.9, but for purposes of this discussion we can (mostly) revert to OS 9. Originally, the machine was a G3 @300; was upgraded more than a year ago to a ZIF G4 @500.
To make a long story short, it won't boot from any hard drives, will not boot from any OS X CD, and will only occasionally boot from a 9.x startup CD (whether Apple or Norton Utilities). I think it's an open firmware issue, possibly caused by a bad motherboard (rev. 2).
All this started happening after I used techtool pro, but I think that's coincidence (even though I acknowledge that, for cops and computer users, there are no coincidences.) Also, as discussed below, I'm having the same problems with an HD that wasn't even in the computer when all these things began.
Here are some of the things I've done.
--repeatedly reset PRAM, both with key combinations and removing battery. The only time it will boot from a 9.x CD is after resetting PRAM.
--removed all add-on PCI cards.
--removed additional VRAM
--removed all memory cards and tried replacing one at a time.
--disconnected both existing hard drives and replaced with an older OS 9.x hard drive (approx 60 mb) that I'd used before. Also tried different ribbon cables.
--unplugged floppy drive
--disconnected PCI ATA disk controller that I'd been using for running a large (1.8 gb) hard drive.
--regarding open firmware: readenv usually shows totally normal default AND installed settings. Using reset-all works fine -- at least it makes the machine reboot, but doesn't solve the problem. reset-nvram does NOT work -- says it's an "unknown word."
--using startup keys like holding down the option key, or shift key, or X key or cmd-option plus two others I can't remember, has no effect. Again, after I've tried any kind of reboot, the ONLY way to get the C-key at startup to boot the CD is by resetting the pram (key combination). Otherwise, the usual result of these experiments is a dark screen on startup -- nothing at all (and the LCD monitor tells me "no input.")
--regarding OSX: sometimes (and I emphasize sometimes) I can get the machine to start booting from an OSX 10.2 CD, but it won't complete the process. Sometimes I get a "prohibited" (as in no-parking, no-smoking) icon; sometimes it will start booting (grey screen, OS X Apple icon), then crash (horizontal grey and white jagged bars); sometimes it will show the OS 9 start icon (the tiny smiling Mac SE), but not boot at all.
--when I get the mac successfully booted with an OS 9.x CD (again, this works sometimes, but not always), the old hard drive with two partitions does show on the desktop and can be accessed. Using either disk repair or Norton Utilities shows the 9.2 system partition on the hard drive to be fine. But if I go to the startup disk control panel, confidently set the 9.2 partition as my startup disk, then reboot, there's no change. It won't boot and I'm back at square one.
--even when I do get successfully booted with 9.x, the machine will still occasionally crash for no reason -- ie when I'm moving a Window.
--the only thing I haven't done is slowed down the processor. It's a ZIF G4 bought more than a year ago from XLR8 your Mac. I'm running at the default 500 mhz, and it's never given me any trouble.
So I think it's a bad motherboard or ROM. Thoughts?
Thanks.

The beige Mac is now operating happily again. My original tentative diagnosis remains the same (although still tentative): corrupted PRAM from bad battery, compounded by bad cables that wrote corrupted data to hard drives, and also (possibly) allowing Tech Tool Pro (a utility that I now regard with deep suspicion) to create a "virtual" startup partition.
A few things I've learned along the way that hopefully may be useful:
--remember that the Ex Post Facto utility can be used to help OS X startup, not just installation. This applies to hard drives, emergency CDs, installation CDs, etc. If you can boot into any working hard drive partition (OS 9 or a backup OS 10), then run Ex Post Facto (same program runs on either OS 9 or X -- don't ask me how) and tell it what system you want to start up from. Also, the utility has sometimes told me that the startup extensions on the disc that I wanted to boot up from were bad, and offered to fix them (which works).
--at least on my Mac (beige, v. 2 motherboard), resetting the CUDA button, resetting the PRAM, resetting Open Firmware and "draining" the memory by unplugging the computer and disconnecting the battery for several hours ALL DO DIFFERENT THINGS.
Specifically, if I'm having trouble booting (from a hard drive or a CD), the FIRST thing I do is restart and resetting the PRAM on the fly -- holding down command, option, P and R at startup, and waiting for the chimes (preferably at least 3-4 times).
If I do that and DON'T hear the chimes, that's my cue for my SECOND action -- restarting into open firmware (command, option O and F keys on startup). That should bring up the black text on white background open firmware screen. View other posts or apple support for details, but if you do PRINTENV and see a bunch of weird gibberish after the default/installed lists, you know that it was messed up and you need to clear it through reset nvram and reset all commands. Be aware some of these commands do or do not work depending upon what version of Open Firmware you have.
After I've rebooted with Open Firmware, then on restart I should be able to reset the PRAM on the fly. If that works, then either let the machine run and see what happens, or hold down the C command and see if it will boot from the CD
Usually, if I've fixed everything as above, the machine will boot into whatever version of OS 9 it finds on a hard drive. That's fine with me -- at that point, use Ex Post Facto to reboot into your OS X. (Before I forget: I used the shareware startup CD creator program BootCD to make an emergency boot CD based on OS 10.2.8 (which theoretically will support a beige mac in native fashion) and Disk Warrior, the god of disk repair utilities. Even though the CD should boot just by holding down the C key on startup, it doesn't -- but if I use Ex Post Facto to boot it, no problems (although the process is very slow -- be patient). Then I can fix almost anything using Disk Warrior.)
If none of the above works, then I'll try resetting the CUDA (on my beige minitower, it's a very small black button inconveniently located between a PCI slot and the side of the computer housing). Hold it down for 15 seconds. That should REALLY clear the PRAM. I know this does something different from the previous steps because this is the only action (except the battery disconnect -- next) that clears the date and time from the memory.
If all else fails, I will unplug the computer and disconnect the battery, then push the CUDA button for 15 seconds and let the machine sit overnight.
One final finding -- I thought I'd fixed everything, but both my hard drives suddenly quit working, I discovered that during all this repeated connect/disconnect of things, one of the male pins inside one of the connectors on my Acard ATA PCI card had broken off. Not good. Fortunately, the card had a second connector, which works fine. And I did some extensive shaking of the computer to make sure (I hope) that the broken pin hadn't landed on a circuit board.
All this took more than two weeks, and the advice of this board was much appreciated. Now I'm on to my next adventure -- trying to figure out why a combo Firewire/USB PCI card won't mount an external drive on Firewire, but will on USB. I've tried two cards with same result -- but a Firewire-only card works just fine.)
Regards to all,
Graham

Happy on Leopard, hangs on sleep with Tiger: Firmware issue?

I have an early 2005 G5 dual 2.0 that I bought new. It has 2.5GB of RAM and two drives: a 1TB and a just-recently-reinstalled original 160 GB drive.
I've updated it through the years and recently it's been running Leopard 10.5.8 on the 1TB drive.
I've just replaced it with a Mac Pro as my main machine, and wanted to set up the G5 to run Classic apps, so installed the original 160GB drive, wiped it clean with Drive Genius, and did an erase and install from my original 10.4 CD, followed by a bunch of Software Update runs to get it to 10.4.11.
Trouble is, when booted in 10.4.11, every time it sleeps, the fans go into high gear and the system hangs, so I have to press the power button to shut it down.
I cleaned off the disk and reinstalled.
I zapped the PRAM/NVRAM.
I booted in Open Firmware and did a reset.
I disconnected the 10.5 disk.
I ran Apple Hardware Test.
I disconnected all cables and pressed the PMU/SMU reset button.
Had a very nervous day when reconnecting the power cord gave me a solid power LED and a non-operational power button, until I got brave and reset the PMU again with the power cord plugged in (against Apple advice, but some folks said it worked). That got me booted again.
Ran through several cycles of circle-with-bar gray screen boots, hang with loud fan boots, safe boots, etc.
None of these steps indicated anything unusual or stopped the loud fan/dark screen/hang under 10.4.11.
I'm now at the point where the machine boots fine, sleeps fine, and is generally happy as a clam when booted on my tried-and-true 10.5.8 disk, but does the loud fan/dark screen/hang when booted under 10.4.11, most consistently around sleep time, but sometimes just trying to boot.
Other possible useful debugging info:
Right now, the only things plugged in are Ethernet, Apple Keyboard, Apple Mighty Mouse, and VGA monitor with DVI adapter.
Internal speaker no longer works, but headphone jack does.
I did try during this process to get my old Thrustmaster ADB joystick running via a Griffin iMate, but those experiments are on hold until I get the base system stable.
Most posts about similar behaviors (for example, http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2444469&start=0&tstart=0) point to a hardware issue, but that doesn't make sense to me because there aren't any issues under 10.5.8.
My current thinking is that it may possibly be a firmware issue, that I have a version installed that requires 10.5.x and is not compatible with 10.4.x. System Profiler lists
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.4f1
However, I can't find much info about this version.
Even if I found a 10.4-friendly Firmware Update, I'm not sure the machine would let me install an older version.
So, does my thinking seem sound, or are there other avenues I should pursue?

No PCI cards other than stock video card.
No 3rd party kexts running. Just a fresh install of 10.4, then everything Software Update fed me to get to 10.4.11.
Safe boot does not change the behavior.
I ran several more experiments and have some more results to share.
Booting from the Tiger disk reliably caused the machine to become unresponsive when going into sleep mode, after which the fans would go to full speed after a couple of minutes. Occasionally, upon power down and power up, I'd get the gray screen with the circle/slash graphic. Powering down and powering up would then result in a successful reboot.
Booting from the Leopard disk would not cause the machine to hang when going in to sleep. However, I did notice that the machine wasn't really sleeping, either. The screen would blank, but I never heard hard disks park (the option to "put hard disks to sleep when possible" is checked in the Energy Saver System Preference), and the case fans continued spinning at low (normal) speed. Wake up took no time at all and made no sound except from the monitor. It may not be sleeping, but at least it's not crashing, either.
Perhaps there really is a hardware issue, and Leopard is handling it more gracefully than Tiger. Unfortunately, Apple Hardware Test isn't finding it, and I see nothing indicated in the logs.
It's less than ideal, but unless I find a solution, I may just put the machine in never sleep mode to keep it from crashing.

Reinstalling Snow Leopard after Mountain Lion! Firmware issue!!

Greetings!
I have a Mid 2011 iMac - which I wish too sell so I can get the new iMac when they are released.
Originaly my iMac came with SL, which I have the factory reinstall dvd.
Over time, I have upgraded the OS from SL to Lion, then ML. Which I purchessed via the App Store under my iTunes account.
Now I wish to sell my iMac, I have tried doing a format and install of SL using my original SL disc. But when I try to install, I get the bleeping sound.
I can format and installed ML via wifi download, but naturaly that requires my appleID, so thats no go for selling my iMac to someone.
One thory is that I did an offical apple firmware update on my iMac, I can't remember which one, Bluetooth, Firewire, wifi, I don't really remember. But I think that is stopping me from installing SL again.
Any help would be great.

Thanks for the reply, I will try that tonight.
I'm working on this thory I found on google....
'Booting a new MacBook Pro (Late 2011) from a retail 10.6.3 disc resulted in a black screen and a repeating 3 beep pattern. This is due to missing Sandy Bridge drivers. Apple will ship a 10.6.6 (iMac) or 10.6.7 (MacBook Pro) installer disc'
My OS was the 10.6.3 that came with my iMac. I phoned Apple, they wanted me to pay £18 for 10.6.6
Hmmmmmm!

24" iMac firmware issue

I have a 24" iMac (Early 2009) that has what I believe to be a firmware issue. The computer boots up to show the grey Apple logo, with a spinning gear and progress bar showing up pretty quickly. The progress bar fills maybe 5%, then goes away, leaving the Apple logo and spinning gear. The computer doesn't boot any further, with the gear continuing to spin. It won't boot from an external drive, an install disc, or netboot. I'm unable to clear the PRAM (holding the keys down does nothing). I've removed and re-installed the RAM, and I've removed the CMOS battery on the logic board and put it back in after a couple minutes. Nothing has changed. I'm guessing a firmware update was installed and power was shut-off mid-update, causing to be stuck in this loop. Am I missing something? Is there anything I can do to clear this EFI update or reset the firmware somehow?

Hello All
As a 'newbie-switcher' (think that's right!?!), I am already on my second iMac in three months, with the first being returned within a week due to it restarting on it's own a couple of times a day and reporting no error at all! My current iMac has worked flawlessly until around a week ago when the restarting behaviour returned but as often as before, maybe once every couple of days. I reset the PRAM & SMC and checked\repaired permissions and all seemed ok until I then updated the EFI firmware a couple of days ago. I am now having similar problems, if not identical to those described here with the iMac not waking from sleep, shuting down or restarting again on it's own. And once I found it would not start at all, the screen stayed black but the fans were running on full speed! I have again reset the PRAM and SMC and will now wait and see!
During my investigations to these problems I was able to cause the iMac to instantly shutdown and restart by simply touching the cables at the rear, Power or Keyboard, and last night I shut it down by simply putting my cup of coffee down next to the iMac!!! So you would think that a loose connection on the power cord could be to blame, but flexing and bending the cables and conectors will not re-create the problem!?!
Do you guys think that I should be looking to swap it for iMac number three (third time lucky?), do you think it sounds more like a hardware problem with the power supply or the firmware?

Apple TV can stream physical DVD played on my iMac?

I think some of you may like me living outside US and outside Apple's iTune market. I wonder if we can still buy this Apple TV to stream physical DVD movies played on our Macs (through iTune, I suppose) to our TVs. If positive, it will at least attract some sales from consumers globally.

I'm just wondering if this might be a future "software" upgrade. As we have an 18 month old LCD tv, our HDMI jack is being used by our HD cable and our component jack is being used by our DVD player. It appears that an HDMI splitter is a couple hundred bucks and the component cable splitter doesn't look a whole lot cheaper. It would be nice if we could just use our computer as our DVD player and eliminate the need for a DVD player all together, thus eliminating our "out of jacks" problem. New LCD and Plasmas have multiple Digital ins. But a year or two back it wasn't so much of an issue.
Thanks.

Sony DRU-810A 16x DVD±RW on G4 MDD ?

Hello,
I bought myself a Sony DRU-810A 16x DVD±RW since I only got a Combo Drive in my G4 Mirror Door Drives. The guy at Futureshop told me that if my Mac is IDE/ATA compatible, it should work fine even if Sony claims it only works on Wintel PCs.
I first installed it in cable select mode: Combo first, Sony second, just like Apple request it in the installer guide. My G4 only recognise the Combo Drive. No Sony anywhere...
Then I tried the Master/Slave mode: Combo as Master, Sony as Slave. That's even worst: my G4 don't recognise any of the two drives...
What can I do? Can I use the Sony DRU-810A 16x DVD±RW in a G4 MDD or is it really PC only?
Thanks a lot!

Thank you so much MacRN!
I’ve put the Sony DVD±RW in first and the Combo Drive second on Cable Select mode and the System Profiler now recognise both drives. I tryed booting and writing a 8x DVD-R and everything is perfect.
I really don’t know why the other combinaison didn’t work but that’s not that important.
I will put my problem in the XLR8 database so it can help others.
Thanks again!

16X DVDs won't read

I have a G5 PowerMac (latest version I believe). It came with a SONY DVD RW DW-U21A installed. I tried replacing it with a Memorex DVD unit to be able to use 16x DVDs. It still won't read 16x DVDs even though the Memorex DVD drive will burn an dread them just fine in a PC. Is there a special drive that I need or is it a matter of the G5 not being able to read 16x no matter what?

I think you've got the same "software fault" that's affecting a number of us at the moment.. I'm was trying to log this with Apple but I'm just out of support so they won't help.. They wont even acknowledge my question.. Search on "DVD not reading blank media" or similar..

Apple Firmware Restore

I've been looking at this article - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2213
I have a few macs, and a 2 year old Macbook Pro with annoying fans which never seem to stop. I've read that the firmware update which caused the change in the fans behaviour can be downgraded.
However the article above says:
This CD cannot be used to return an Intel-based Macintosh computer's firmware to a previous version if a successful update has already been performed.
So how can I get back to an older version of the firmware and make the Macbook more user friendly?
Also see here - http://www.macworld.com/article/140845/2009/05/mbpsmcfirmware.html
Any help would be appreciated.
Darren

OK, so I don't have one of the batteries listed. Well I do, the model number is right, but the serial is not. I bought a replacement battery late last year, which would explain that.
So I'm still thinking the firmware issue is worth looking at - I think if anyone tried using the MBP I have while the fans are going, they too would find it incredibly noisy and frustrating.
So I guess my ultimate question is - can I restore or downgrade the MPB to an older firmware version?
Darren

Apple Firmware Issues w/16x DVD+R's?

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