What Is This All About.

[waynepixel]

I seem to be having trouble with my CD rom DVD player in my MAC G4 400Mhz. OS X 10.2.4


I can read DVD but when I try to read burned CDs it will just not read them.

How can it read one but not the other.?
:confused:

[alset]

Originally posted by waynepixel
I seem to be having trouble with my CD rom DVD player in my MAC G4 400Mhz. OS X 10.2.4


I can read DVD but when I try to read burned CDs it will just not read them.

How can it read one but not the other.?
:confused:

What system and software did you use to burn the discs?

Dan

[mrjamin]

is it just a straight forward cdrom/dvd? cdrw's have a limited life time (mind you, as do regular cdroms, but their's is significantly longer).

Might just need a lense clean

[timbloom]

IIRC, there was a firmware update for that drive at one point in time, you might try to use it.

you should be able to find it here:
http://www.info.apple.com/usen/imac/

[Eniregnat]

I agree- start with cleaning the disks.
mrjamin

CDRWs have a limited life time (mind you, as do regular CD-ROMs, but theirs is significantly longer...


From somebody that works with a lot of DVDs and CDs: The statistic was somewhere around 11 years of constant reading before a normal pressed CD would experience significant data loss. For CDRs/RW it is faster, but simple storage and normal use shouldn't degrade the disk significantly. Disks with a faster burn time, i.e. "Record at up to 40x" have dyes that are more sensitive to radiation and disks with slower burn in times "..12x,8,4,2,1" have less sensitive inks. Leaving a disk out in the sun can cause permanent erasure and data loss. Also, some disks are susceptible to data loss when frozen, as the disk is a compost, the sandwiched materials can delaminate under extreme thermal strain. Some other possible reasons for failure is incompatible format (usually not a problem for a Mac), lack of a catalog track, incomplete burn in, poor/failed burn in or poor/failed read due to burner problems. Burners/readers do have life spans. If you burn a lot of disks, you might of burnt out the laser diode, or there might be some other problem with either the burn in drive or the drive your using to read the disks.

Some of the equipment that I have at works. I have several Mac/PC DVDrw/CDrw FantomDrives (Mostly to burn 9.2Gb type I cartraages), 2 MO drives (not worth the cost and time to burn), dozens of CD burners, and we will have a mass CD duplicator (robot arms just look so cool when working) in house with in the next year. I have the unfortunate task of to compress over 1000gB of nearly uncompressible data from 3 SnapServers and move it to a new archive later this month. My boss wants me to use DVDs, another CDs, and new equipment is just out of the question. Sorry- I needed to vent.

[mrjamin]

cdrw/cdrom drives have a limited lifetime too - especially cdrw's. Mine have never lasted more than 2 years or so.

[macphoria]

My problem is the opposite. My SuperDrive works with CD's, but not DVD's.

[Kwyjibo]

hmm no idea wayne but next time can you use a little bit mroe descriptive title like "Combo Drive trouble in 400mhz Pmac". Its jsut helpful for all of us that probably can't help and those that can will be more likely to help you..