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Should my Powerbooks Combo drive sound like a dot matrix printer?

K

kerb

macrumors regular
Original poster
It's just arrived and I'm installing stuff on it and when it's reading it intermittently sounds like a dot matrix printer.

Is this normal? 😕


btw this thing and the 4G iPod are insanely gorgeous 😀
 
Does your Combo drive make a whirring noise mixed with some grinding as the disc inside spins up to speed? My Powerbook's drive did that, and it's completely normal.
 
Yeah the PB optical drives are noisy..
Sound almost like an old microline 320 series dotmatrix... 😛

-tb
 
just as a update it only happened when intensively reading the Panther install disc


importing CD's into iTunes doesn't create the same noise


dot matrix printers kicked ass. I've still got a big bundle of dot matrix printer around somewhere!
 
My PB does it and I like it. It brings me back to the old days. For CD based applications, I use that disk image feature to make a virtual CD so I don't need to use the regular CD anymore. That will save wear and tear on the CD and drive and also improve battery life. I wish I can still have the sound with virtual CDs.
 
ive got a 2.5g5 with an apple 2 page display and a dot matrix printer 😛

just kidding, but arent dot matrixes still used for giant volume printing that's too big even for laser? i seem to remember seeing that somewhere
 
homerjward said:
...but arent dot matrixes still used for giant volume printing that's too big even for laser? i seem to remember seeing that somewhere
Click to expand...

most office max/depot's have one or two dot matrix printers on the shelf, and stock ribbon for them as well. AFAIK, a lot of offices are still using dot matrix for certain printing jobs. i heard once that dot matrix printers can print onto carbon copy paper and it translates, so that would be a plus...
 
kerb said:
importing CD's into iTunes doesn't create the same noise
Click to expand...

No, it wouldn't do. The sound you're hearing is the laser carriage moving back and forth. An audio CD is read sequentially therefore you won't hear the carriage moving around.
 
Yeah, dot matrix is still used for carbon forms and NCR forms, since they require pressure in order to print onto the duplicate copies. And they're still pretty common in POS devices.
 
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