Problems with External CD-DVD drive

I have an iMac G4 running OSX 10.4.11 and a SONY DRX-830UL-T external CD/DVD RW drive. I have been able to use this drive for reading CDs and DVDs and burning CDs in the past, but now I am unable to use the drive at all. The drive does turn on and off and I can hear the CD spin when I put it in there. Here is what I have done so far:
1. Checked Disk Utility. The drive does not show up there.
2. Checked System Profiler. The drive is connected by Firewire, but System Profiler only shows an unknown device under Firewire.
3. Reconnected drive using USB. Nothing changed.
4. Disconnected and Reconnected the drive.
5. Rebooted.
6. Rebooted and reset PRAM (CmdOption+PR).
7. Downloaded PatchBurn (which I had used before). Patchburn doesn't display the external drive.
At this point, I'm stuck. I don't think that the drive is bad, although I will check that out. I would appreciate any advice or help I could get on this. Thanks!

Hi, and a warm welcome to the forums!
I find Most Opticals to be far shorter lived than I would hope.
Does the FW port see other devices fine?
Do you know anybody with a Mac that you could try it on to eliminate any other cause?

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