Second optical Quicksilver drive

how is it possible to open a second optical drive on a powermac???? in order to get the drive open you have to hit the open key on the keyboard. there is not button on the tower to open it.

can't speak for the G4 case...

But it definitely won't fit in a G3 tower. The lower drive bay (often factory filled with a zip drive) has room for a 5.25" drive, but has been permanently molded for a 3.5" drive.

So, at least in a G3 tower, there's only room for a 3.5" drive in there unless you've got some patience and a hack saw.

why doesn't someone try and open their G4 up, it's incredibly easy, and see if they can fit one in????

Second CD Drive

Good question. I dont have an answer for you, but have you considered an external drive? I have one, (firewire) and it is nice and speedy.

And as far as the second keyboard button goes, you can just get a CD drive with a button directly on it, which will open without the need of the keyboard one. It just wont look as pretty as the flush Quicksilver case.

i opened up a G4---

it looks to me like it is literally impossible to put in another cd drive. the bay harness is configured for a zip or floppy drive. there is nowhere to screw in a drive.

🙁
i really would like to have 2 cd drives

It's possible to have two optical drives

It's possible but you have to think outside of the box-literally. I have a G4-533 with a CD-RW drive and I found an internal DVD-R/RAM drive at COMPUSA for $350. I really wanted to put the drive into the 3.5" bay--but no way. I got tired of swapping the drives back and forth when I wanted to burn a CD because the DVD-R/Ram drive doesn't burn CDs just reads them. Anyway what i did was this:

My machine has three hard drives so I had to add an ATA/IDE PCI card in 2nd slot of my mac. I picked it up from Promax for $99 and it can support two drives one of which was connected to my 3rd hard drive. One time when I opened up my machine I thought hey I can plug in my DVD-R/Ram drive ribbon into the IDE PCI slot and mount the drive on top of my machine if I thread the IDE ribbon and powersupply through an empty PCI slot 1 panel and connect it DVD-R/Ram mounted on top of my G4 with the Contour Design G-rack. I then wrapped the drive in a static bag with slits for drive to eject and the cabbles to plug in and Ducked taped the Drive to the G-Rack and it works like a chanmp. I've got my Dream machine that can do it all now.

I have 3 hard drives for 157 gigs.
Internal apple CD-RW drive
Internal Jaz drive-in the internal 3.5 bay
QPS Internal DVD-R/Ram drive attached to a G-Rack on top of my mac connected internally to the PCI card inside.

I've burned DVDs through DVD Studio Pro with no problem, I can read my DVD-RAM Discs and burn CDS and Read my old Jaz drives. I'm a happy man!! One thing i want to test is if i can fool iDVD2 to burn a DVD because it is internal drive, but not a pioneer drive. Will see I guess. I wish apple would make the 2nd bay a combo 5.25/3.5 inch bay!!!

Sorry for the long message.

PS--the eject button works on both drives-it ejects both of them at once--cool.

PSS--all parts including the G-Rack ($20), IDE Ribbon (free), y-power cables (4x$2=$8) and IDE/ATA PCI ($99) card cost a total of about $128.

Out.

the whole point is to not have to put the drive outside of the tower. that's what we wanted to know. inside is better looking.

I PREFER EXTERNAL DRIVES

...but they are unfortunately more expensive than internal drives but come in handy if you have a lot of computers like me or buy and sell/giveaway computers fairly often and like to keep the extra drives around

i have had an external iomega zip 100 drive which was first used for a mac, then a pc, and now for another computer so i certainly got my money's worth from that one external drive and it really isn't pretty to look at just sitting there taking up deskspace but it has got it's job done which was to store information on zip disks

and when all three of those computers are paperweights or given to charity/relatives, i will still have that dusty and trusty old zip 100 sitting there waiting for yet another computer to serve which has an available usb port

second drive

When I hit the "open drive"-button on my Quicksilver keyboard, I have to wait for my external CD-rom drive to open, only then my SuperDrive opens. "Cool"? I call it plain stupid! When I would want to open my external CD-rom, I can push the eject button...

The Pioneer DVR-103 (AKA Apple SuperDrive) has an eject button, but Apple decided this was not pretty enough for them, and chose to hide it (if you drill a hole through the front of your Quicksilver, this would be solved). The "eject" button on the keyboard is a sad attempt to circumvent an esthetic "problem".
You probably can put in a 3.5 inch drive in the lower bay, but there is only a front bevel for a ZIP drive (don't ask me where to get that!), so if you want to put in an MO drive, this won't look good.

Eject

There is an Eject app on the system disk in the extra folders...You can map this to an eject key or any key on a non-mac keyboard.

Also.. I find my eject button will work on an external QPS drive... but only if a disk is in there... IE I can eject a loaded disc via the eject key...

-Rich

http://www.richardharringtonvideo.com

Eject key

Yes, I have tried the Eject app and the Eject control strip module. But both do only the same thing the eject button does on the keyboard. Apple included the app & control strip module for people who use non-Apple keyboards without Eject-button.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to "map" this app to a specific drive. When both my SuperDrive and my external SCSI CD-rw drive are empty, the Eject button (or the Eject app) opens the external drive first, then my SuperDrive.
When one of the two CD-drives is full, pushing the Eject button only opens the full one.

Also, the CD tray on my G4 opens on every cold start. This is an issue with several USB input devices (I have to use an iMate for my dongles) that Apple still hasn't addressed.