I need some drivers for my CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive

Question

I have been going through the apple site for a few hours here and I would really like to speak to a human being about this. This is not hard. I have a Pismo PowerBook G3, which I purchased online, used. Wiped the HD when I got it, installed 10.2.8. Updated iTunes to version 6.0.5. I get an error message when I try to burn a CD, missing software or incompatible drive. The drive is an apple brand drive. I am not certain where to find the serial number on it, there are a lot of numbers on it, but it can be provided if someone will tell me where to look. It's not a hardware problem, I can watch DVDs and play CDs, just can't burn. The drive says "CD-RW/DVD-ROM" right on it, and my computer is able to recognize it as such in the system profiler. I am led to believe I am missing a driver(s) that will allow iTunes to burn CDs with the drive.
It'd be great if I could get this on a disc, but if I can just download it from somewhere (willing to pay for it/them!), as long as I can burn it to a disc or download it again if I install a larger HD, that's wonderful. Or, say, I could wait on downloading it until I HAVE upgraded the HD, which I will probably do in the coming year. This would not be as wonderful, but I'm willing to do it.
Please, can somebody help me?

Answer 1

If you can, I'd recommend upgrading to 10.4, as it usually recognizes any 3rd party CDRW/DVD or DVD burner, without the need for Patchburn.
You can check the xlr8yourmac website for reports from Pismo (and other PB) users who have added aftermarket CD/DVD burners to their Pismos, etc.
I too love the Pismo (have had and upgraded at least 10 over the years, some for me and some for family members). The expansion bay was a great idea back in the day. I've found that most if not all aftermarket notebook, a.k.a. "slim" burners fit in the expansion bay. And the Pismo, coupled with Tiger 10.4 (I find 10.4.7 to be outstanding and haven't updated beyond it), is highly usable still today, given that big hard disks and DVD burners and 54g wifi PCMCIA cards (Airport compatible, no drivers needed: e.g. the Motorola WN825G cardbus card) have plummeted in price from a couple years ago. Too bad that compatible RAM is still expensive, as are new Pismo batteries (new, they cost more than many Pismos on eBay!).
As to brands/models, I like the Sony-Nec Optiarc AW-G540A 8x DVD burner (recognized as Master, ID=0 right out of the box, very fast, fairly quiet, priced @ $50-60) because it just works; and the UJ-8xx series DVD burners from Panasonic, which are pretty reliable (and very cheap on ebay if they're older models), because you can swap the faceplate/bezel with the original bezel from the DVD-Rom in your Pismo (if it was a Panasonic model; Apple also used LG drives).
Good luck.