Can you have a combo and superdrive on Power Mac?

Johnboy said:

I have a Power Mac G4 1 Ghz MDD with a Combo Drive. I would like to add a Superdrive. Would it be wise to just pull out the Combo and put in the Super or have both? Thanks in advance for the help.

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I believe the Combo Drive burns CDs faster than the Super Drive (or at least it does in the current line of Apple notebooks), so I would leave the Combo Drive in and add the SuperDrive in a different slot.

I have a DP 1.25 MDD and I have both the combo and an added superdrive. I would recommend keeping both in so that you can have the added benefit of the faster combo burning speed and also the ability to copy from on e CD to another.

To add the superdrive however, you must make the combo drive the slave (i.e., take the combo drive out, put it in the bottom bay, pop in the superdrive in the top bay and reconnect the cables, which should be set to cable select so that the superdrive becomes the "master" drive). Without doing this, or with just putting the superdrive in the lower bay and connecting the cables up (which will make the superdrive the "slave") your G4 will not recognize the dvd burner as a superdrive and it won't work.

Oh yeah, make sure to get a pioneer (branded or unbranded drive), or the G4 will not think it's a superdrive.

- reaper

I am looking to add a Superdrive to my G4 DP, im just not sure which is the correct model to get and where is the best place to get one from in the uk

Thanks

kiemposan said:

I am looking to add a Superdrive to my G4 DP, im just not sure which is the correct model to get and where is the best place to get one from in the uk

Thanks

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Any current pioneer dvd-burner, branded or unbranded (i.e., sold as a pioneer drive or under a different name like cendyne), should work as a super drive in your mac. The model numbers are usually something like DVR-106, DVR-107, etc. There are some models that haven't worked for some people, but they are few and far between (and are the result of different firmware that can be flashed using a PC) and usually result when people have purchased the drive through a shady reseller. Just make sure that it is a pioneer mechanism and you should be all set.

- reaper