After-market superdrive ok?

[the next reviva]

Hey everyone, while i look to purchase an emac shortly, i can't justify spending an extra $300 on 128mb ram and a superdrive. would it be smart to buy an after market dvd-rw (Pioneer DVR-104) i believe thats the same one in the emacs, and install it myself. Is it a terribly difficult process? will it burn from mac apps (idvd?) hit me up with some help



-Matt

 

[ducati]

Absolute piece of cake to install. I did exactly what you are thinking... Bought an eMac/800/128/CD for $599. Dropped in a gig of RAM ($150). Added a DVR-A06 (DVR-106, newer version that also supports +R) for $150. Overclocked to 1.066 GHz per lbodnar's thread.

Voila, an $899 eMac that just rocks bang-for-the-buck wise.

Adding the DVD couldn't have been easier. There are great web instructions out there at http://www.wilko.com/emac/ . Very easy to follow, and I didn't even remove the digital module... Just get to that point and drop the drive in. Super Easy.

Upon reboot, you will be able to burn discs from the Finder, etc without any issues.

I decided to reinstall OS X as I didn't have iDVD installed from the factory. For some reason, iDVD didn't install... Perhaps it wasn't on the media? I didn't investiagte that any further, as I had already bought iLife '04. Installed that and everything works as it should from the factory.

Hope that helps!

 

[the next reviva]

thanx man. that gives the option of gettin the super cheap cd-rom emacs

 

[michaelrjohnson]

very nice! i give you a gold star for efficient use of your money!

 

[bannedagain]

I wouldn't be spending my money on an emac. Now or in the forseeable future.

The Radeon 7500 was a great card 3-4 years ago but just can't cut it today and it's an insult to the consumer to try and pass on 4 year old computing technology. The same goes with the rest of the hardware; SDRAM, I can't buy a new PC motherboard that supports SD RAM. The FSB of 133 or 167 ('m not sure) but the fact is that, that is a crippling fetaure of the G4 based systems.

If you can't afford atleast an imac your much better off buying PC, since for $1300AUD (the cost of the base model emac) you can get an AMD XP2500+ (333FSB), 80GB 7200rpm ATA 133, R9600, 512DDR400, 17" flact CRT, nForce2 Ulta motherboard (Firewire, USB 2, Blue tooth, optical and coaxal audio...) the list goes on.

 

[Horrortaxi]

Originally posted by ducati
I decided to reinstall OS X as I didn't have iDVD installed from the factory. For some reason, iDVD didn't install... Perhaps it wasn't on the media?

iDVD isn't part of OS X, it's part of iLife. It just happens that most of iLife installs with the OS (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie).

 

[the next reviva]

Originally posted by bannedagain
I wouldn't be spending my money on an emac. Now or in the forseeable future.

The Radeon 7500 was a great card 3-4 years ago but just can't cut it today and it's an insult to the consumer to try and pass on 4 year old computing technology. The same goes with the rest of the hardware; SDRAM, I can't buy a new PC motherboard that supports SD RAM. The FSB of 133 or 167 ('m not sure) but the fact is that, that is a crippling fetaure of the G4 based systems.

If you can't afford atleast an imac your much better off buying PC, since for $1300AUD (the cost of the base model emac) you can get an AMD XP2500+ (333FSB), 80GB 7200rpm ATA 133, R9600, 512DDR400, 17" flact CRT, nForce2 Ulta motherboard (Firewire, USB 2, Blue tooth, optical and coaxal audio...) the list goes on.

i have myself a system just like that, minus the crt, and it is much better than a pc or most low end macs, and it was hundreds less. but i'm tired of the pc drag and i need a mac (even a cheap one) for music editing, so vid card isnt a huge deal. it's crazy why macs are so much money, but theres little alternative