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Best Place to Find DVD Burner for Power Mac G4?

I Have one of these I scored stupid cheap at my favorite thrift and has been surprisingly handy to have around.


The thing is a 4lb brick. I am firmly convinced they could be an outright menace to furry neighborhood cats if thrown. Anyhoo, I liked the one in the link because it has most of its bits, neat era software and noted functionality spanning from OS 8.6 through OSX, so a pretty sure bet (I use Toast 5 & 9 titanium btw).

That and a original box because you know this thing will be worth its weight in gold to collectors and the beige - OMG hundys on ebay all day! :D
 
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DearthnVader said:
Just about any ATAPI drive should work with Toast, whatever compatibility list they had is likely long dead along with OS 9 support.

ATAPI and CD/DVD burning is pretty much standard as far as Toast goes, you'd be hard presses to find a drive it doesn't support.

I had a cartage load SCSI CD burner in my PM8600 and toast fully supported it, I've never found a drive it didn't support, but I suppose it could happen, it's just not likely.

DVD player for OS 9 on the other hand maybe a little more picky, tho on a New World Mac with native ATAPI it should not be an issue, so long as it's on the built-in bus.

iDVD on the other hand, for OS 9, will not work on anything that isn't an Apple shipped drive, tho it could likely be hacked.
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Ok, thanks! My main issue is that the replacement drive I tried was one that Tiger absolutely refused to see and would cause OS 9 to lock up every time I opened the system profiler. It wasn't anything special, just an HP DVD-RW drive. So I'm trying to avoid a repeat of that.
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RhianB said:
I Have one of these I scored stupid cheap at my favorite thrift and has been surprisingly handy to have around.


The thing is a 4lb brick. I am firmly convinced they could be an outright menace to furry neighborhood cats if thrown. Anyhoo, I liked the one in the link because it has most of its bits, neat era software and noted functionality spanning from OS 8.6 through OSX, so a pretty sure bet (I use Toast 5 & 9 titanium btw).

That and a original box because you know this thing will be worth its weight in gold to collectors and the beige - OMG hundys on ebay all day! :D
Click to expand...

Nice! I'm planning to go thrift store shopping next week, so maybe I can find something like that then ;)
 
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My advice is don't buy another Pioneer. They're great when they work, but their optical hardware is known to die sooner than most. Sometimes it's just the CD or just the DVD optics that die, but it can easily be both at once also.

The best IMHO are LG. Last I checked they still make a PATA/IDE version. And they also boot all MacOS discs.
 
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timidpimpin said:
My advice is don't buy another Pioneer. They're great when they work, but their optical hardware is known to die sooner than most. Sometimes it's just the CD or just the DVD optics that die, but it can easily be both at once also.

The best IMHO are LG. Last I checked they still make a PATA/IDE version. And they also boot all MacOS discs.
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Thanks for the advice! :D
 
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I used to get LiteOn drives when building my PCs back in the day. Budget priced but well rated by builders. Never have one fail on me. As for untested drives on eBay, probably not. I am throwing out a Yamaha SCSI 4-4-16 boxed with all the bits I bought a while back from someone who didn't look like a dealer. Dead as a doornail.

About the only real insoluble problem you might get with third party drives is if you want to play around with Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server 1.x. That only has driver support for Apple supplied drives and there is no Patchburn type hack around that limitation but that will only ever be an issue for a tiny minority of G3/G4 owners.
 
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weckart said:
I used to get LiteOn drives when building my PCs back in the day. Budget priced but well rated by builders. Never have one fail on me. As for untested drives on eBay, probably not. I am throwing out a Yamaha SCSI 4-4-16 boxed with all the bits I bought a while back from someone who didn't look like a dealer. Dead as a doornail.

About the only real insoluble problem you might get with third party drives is if you want to play around with Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server 1.x. That only has driver support for Apple supplied drives and there is no Patchburn type hack around that limitation but that will only ever be an issue for a tiny minority of G3/G4 owners.
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Ok, thanks for the tip. I bought a drive on eBay a while back and it was damaged in shipping so I couldn't use it in my Power Mac (well I tried and it destroyed the disc I put in it).
 
Yammis & lite-on are what I used in my builds. I like lite-on as well because they came with multiple themed faces which were great for custom gaming boxes.

Just refurbed the drives out of an old R450 Dell - An old toshiba DVD & newer HP branded Mitsumi CDRW. They Worked but were noisy & both a little temperamental so they got a optical eye polish & gear/slider lube. We’ll see if they improve.

As far as used anything, If the price is right, the risk is worth it. Only you can define that. Drag you got a bum drive. SCSI stuff doesn’t exactly grow on trees.
 
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RogerWilco6502 said:
Ok, thanks for the tip. I bought a drive on eBay a while back and it was damaged in shipping so I couldn't use it in my Power Mac (well I tried and it destroyed the disc I put in it).
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When drives are shipped new, the laser arm is taped to stop it moving while being knocked about in transit, so the lens doesn't go out of alignment. Used sellers usually won't remember to do that so even if it survives physically, you might still have R/W issues. Trying to reset the azimuth is an awful job without specialist tools.
 
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weckart said:
When drives are shipped new, the laser arm is taped to stop it moving while being knocked about in transit, so the lens doesn't go out of alignment. Used sellers usually won't remember to do that so even if it survives physically, you might still have R/W issues. Trying to reset the azimuth is an awful job without specialist tools.
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Yeah, and something was broken inside of it too o_O
 
Ok, so I finally got around to looking for drives on eBay and I found these listings. Do these look like they could work with my Power Mac?

www.ebay.com

DVDRW DVD Burner/Player IDE Drive for Desktop. + IDE cable | eBay

<p dir="ltr">DVDRW DVD Burner/Player IDE Drive for Desktop it should work as it has been pulled from a working PC, it comes with the data cable as well</p>
www.ebay.com
www.ebay.com

Hitachi/LG GSA-H40N DVD Writer 16x IDE Optical DVD±RW DL Burner LGE-DMGSA-H42A | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Hitachi/LG GSA-H40N DVD Writer 16x IDE Optical DVD±RW DL Burner LGE-DMGSA-H42A at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
www.ebay.com

DVD-R/RW CD-R/RW Super-Multi Burner IDE Black Internal Desktop Disk Drive LG | eBay

Excellent condition. Tested, works 100% perfect.
www.ebay.com
 
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The listing for #1 is misleading. According to the label it appears to be a CD-R/RW only not a DVD-RW.

s-l1600.jpg
 
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RogerWilco6502 said:
D'oh! Thanks for pointing that out ;)

So, out of the two DVD burners, which one would be the suggested one to try for first?
Click to expand...

Probably #3 as #2 seems a tad pricey for a used IDE/PATA optical unit.

The OP in this thread got that drive working with their PowerMac G3 b&w 350MHz but they had to also use Patchburn for full functionality. Don't be dissuaded by this because I also had to install Patchburn to use the full burning capabilities of the Pioneer DVR-111D DVD-RW that I used as a replacement for my Sawtooth's stock Apple drive. :)

You can find Patchburn (works with Jaguar, Panther and Tiger) here.
 
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TheShortTimer said:
Probably #3 as #2 seems a tad pricey for a used IDE/PATA optical unit.

The OP in this thread got that drive working with their PowerMac G3 b&w 350MHz but they had to also use Patchburn for full functionality. Don't be dissuaded by this because I also had to install Patchburn to use the full burning capabilities of the Pioneer DVR-111D DVD-RW that I used as a replacement for my Sawtooth's stock Apple drive. :)

You can find Patchburn (works with Jaguar, Panther and Tiger) here.
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Ok, thanks! :D

Did you possibly mean to advise me that #2 is the one I should buy, as that's the one mentioned in the thread you linked to? :)
 
RogerWilco6502 said:
Ok, thanks! :D

Did you possibly mean to advise me that #2 is the one I should buy, as that's the one mentioned in the thread you linked to? :)
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No! :)

This is #2 and it's definitely not mentioned in the thread.

s-l1600.jpg


This is the one that's mentioned in the thread that I linked to and is the drive for sale in listing #3. ;)

s-l1600.jpg


It's cheaper than #2: an item which to me, seems rather expensive for a used IDE/PATA optical drive. They can be found for peanuts at places such as flea markets or in discarded PCs. As I mentioned in a previous post, I found an IDE/PATA DVD-ROM/CD-RW by the roadside some months back.
 
TheShortTimer said:
No! :)

This is #2 and it's definitely not mentioned in the thread.

s-l1600.jpg


This is the one that's mentioned in the thread that I linked to and is the drive for sale in listing #3. ;)

s-l1600.jpg


It's cheaper than #2: an item which to me, seems rather expensive for a used IDE/PATA optical drive. They can be found for peanuts at places such as flea markets or in discarded PCs. As I mentioned in a previous post, I found an IDE/PATA DVD-ROM/CD-RW by the roadside some months back.
Click to expand...
Oh, ok! Sorry, I got my links mixed up! Thanks for the feedback! 😂
 
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