iMac G4 with built in blu ray problems

[Zedsdead185]

Hi all,

I just received a 20" imac G4 that I had been after for a while and have recently bought on ebay. Its a fantastic machine! Love it! It suits all my needs as a back up computer. However, I am having a single minor problem with it, and its not a usual one.

The seller said that he had installed a blu ray burner in it as a replacement to a superdrive (i assume the superdrive broke). It didn't effect the price of the machine, and he claimed it still burnt dvd's and cd's. I have received it and it plays dvd fine. Not used any blu ray on it (and probably won't as i know they won't work on a mac anyway. May try and burn one one day though). However, it will not read CD's at all. It takes them in, doesn't seem to even spin them up (or if it does, it does it very quietly) and just stays in their. I can eject them again fine. It just doesn't read them.

I haven't contacted the seller yet. I thought I would ask on here first. One thing I feel I should mention is that (after booting it for the first time and giving it hardware diag to make sure it works) I have already opened it up to replace a PRAM battery (this was in ebay description). I am hoping I haven't affected the drive when I disconnected it doing this. I also don't really want to open it back up again to reconnect it as I have to re-apply thermal paste to the heat sink every time I do this.

Would a disk cleaning disk work ok on a BD-R drive?

Any help would be great thanks.

And oh, sorry if this is in the wrong forum. I didn't know wether to place it in the powerpc one or somewhere else due to the weird nature of it.

 

[DrakkenWar]

Something is not adding up here...

G4's are EIDE. Plain and simple. While there are ways to work around it, within the confines of the small case, I don't think there is a feasible way to shoe-horn in the drive.

Beyond that, that G4 is locked into Leopard PPC no bones about it, and there my friend is the crux of the issue. There have never been, and will never bee Blu-Ray supported drivers for Leopard. So that leaves two options I can think of:

1. If the price you paid is worth what you have received? Crack the case and replace the drive.

2. If not? You got duped from the get go, and I only hope you paid via paypal.

 

[Zedsdead185]

G4's are EIDE. Plain and simple. While there are ways to work around it, within the confines of the small case, I don't think there is a feasible way to shoe-horn in the drive.

Well this guy has managed to get it in there and connected up no problem.

Beyond that, that G4 is locked into Leopard PPC no bones about it, and there my friend is the crux of the issue. There have never been, and will never bee Blu-Ray supported drivers for Leopard. So that leaves two options I can think of:

1. If the price you paid is worth what you have received? Crack the case and replace the drive.

2. If not? You got duped from the get go, and I only hope you paid via paypal.

I know that there isn't blu ray support. I even mentioned that in my post. However, if it is for these reasons that you've listed as to why it won't work, how come it plays DVD's no problem at all? And for the money I paid, I really don't mind this drive not working fully. Theres no way I'm going to send it back just because of this anyway. I have an external dvd drive which I can use if I need, or I may even replace the BD-R drive with a compatible superdrive at some point in the future. Its no biggie.

I am still open to suggestions by the way. An update is that I've found that it doesn't even pick up and spin CD's because they stay in their exact same position when I eject them as they were in when I first inserted them. And yet somehow it can still detect that they are CD's in order to ignore them

 

[Zedsdead185]

Right, I think I may have solved it. After further inspection, the drive is displayed as a 'PIONEER BD-RW BDR-101A' in system profiler. After making a few searches on google for this, I found that it is the first ever blu ray drive made for use with PC's. It also is only able to run and burn blu rays and DVD's. As a drive, it does not support CD's. Who would have thought it? (apart from those smarmy few who knew about the existence of such a drive)

Well, although I have found out that I am not going to be able to use CD's on the internal drive of this iMac, I am still happy to find out the problem.

 

[orestes1984]

I wouldn't be complaining, pull the drive out and put it in a machine that supports Blu-Ray playback and enjoy your free drive. If you've got a spare Mac EIDE Super Drive put it in.