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Emac being annoying

comda

comda

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 15, 2011
619
85
So last fall, i believe Fall 2014, i picked up an Emac. Late model the seller was asking $40 because it wouldn't boot up. Original Setuo when i bought it was 1.42Ghz,256mb RAM, 80Gb HDD, CD-RW/DVD ROM, Airport card.

When i brought it home i booted it up to find it loaded the tiger welcome logo and froze when the bar moved to the end. I firewired the Emac to my macbook and grabbed some applications and looked through it a bit. Then installed Leopard using my macbook as the DVD drive as for some reason no PPC mac wants to read my leopard DVD..

A Few months down the road the hard drive DIED. Just stopped. I figured this is why Tiger was currupt in the first place. So i replaced it with another Seagate 80GB and I upgraded the DVD ROM which never wanted to spit its tray out to a DVD RW and gave it a gig of RAM.

Now with a few month old install of leopard and barely any use the hard drive is always loading something annoying me. Thats my first issue.

My second is again the Computer would not read my Leopard DVD. Yes its a burned but OEM copy. Sadly in the move the originals where lost.

I just installed Virtual PC 7 because i wanted to install windows XP of even 2000 but in the settings the DVD drive doesnt appear and it cant find the drive. The windows 2000 cd will mount on the desktop but not in the software. (this is an authentic version of windows, brought from the copy shop i work at, burned copy but from the authentic disk.)

Anyways. I think i might replace the hard drive in this because its really loud when loading and it seems its always loading something... I might put a CD RW/DVD ROM in it since i found one today with a black front panel VS the Pioneer one i have in there is a faded white front panel. BUt no idea what its constantly loading from the HDD or why VP7 (taken from machintoshgarden) isnt finding the working DVD RW..

Any help is appreciated!
 
Some thoughts; these may or may not help. Leopard indexes constantly. If you want to cut down on HDD activity then disable Spotlight. With regard to your Leopard copy, if you used a DL-DVD, then most are DVD+ and earlier Apple Superdrives only supported DVD-. That or the fact that the lasers on older DVD drives might now be struggling to deal with DL dyes as opposed to pressed discs might be the reason why your PPC Macs are having trouble mounting your burnt copy.
 
comda said:
I just installed Virtual PC 7 because i wanted to install windows XP of even 2000 but in the settings the DVD drive doesnt appear and it cant find the drive. The windows 2000 cd will mount on the desktop but not in the software. (this is an authentic version of windows, brought from the copy shop i work at, burned copy but from the authentic disk.)
Click to expand...

I seem to remember this is a bug in VPC7 - if you attach a USB CD/DVD drive it will work.
Alternatively use an earlier version of VPC from macintoshgarden - it would probably be more efficient on your Emac as well.
 
weckart said:
Some thoughts; these may or may not help. Leopard indexes constantly. If you want to cut down on HDD activity then disable Spotlight. With regard to your Leopard copy, if you used a DL-DVD, then most are DVD+ and earlier Apple Superdrives only supported DVD-. That or the fact that the lasers on older DVD drives might now be struggling to deal with DL dyes as opposed to pressed discs might be the reason why your PPC Macs are having trouble mounting your burnt copy.
Click to expand...

See thats what confuses me. Its a replacement drive from my P4. From what i know its DVDRW +/- and its just annoying how i have to Firewire my macbook and have it sit for a good hour while leopard installs.

----------
Dronecatcher said:
I seem to remember this is a bug in VPC7 - if you attach a USB CD/DVD drive it will work.
Alternatively use an earlier version of VPC from macintoshgarden - it would probably be more efficient on your Emac as well.
Click to expand...

I did a little googling last night and yes thats correct.. I simply imaged the windows 2k Cd to my documents with some master setting and then simply just told VP7 to look for the image. It loaded up right away.

Had to post phone the install it was 2am.. ;)
 
All DVD drives starting from 1999 onwards can read every type of DVD expect for DVD-RAM. If your eMac is having difficulty reading a DVD, the lens is either dirty, the laser is becoming weak, or the disc is damaged.
 
Intell said:
All DVD drives starting from 1999 onwards can read every type of DVD expect for DVD-RAM. If your eMac is having difficulty reading a DVD, the lens is either dirty, the laser is becoming weak, or the disc is damaged.
Click to expand...

Oh God DVD RAM? I remember those. Haven't heard about those in years.
 
A.Goldberg said:
Oh God DVD RAM? I remember those. Haven't heard about those in years.
Click to expand...

My 500 MHz Sawtooth has a DVD-RAM drive, which was the high-end option on those. You can always tell by the unusual looking tray.

I've never actually put a DVD-RAM disk in it, but if I ever come across one I'll be sure to give it a try.
 
The photo below shows what DVD drive it has. its form 2005 i believe... I put it in the mac a while ago.

As for WIndows, windows 2000 works like a dream super dream. Windows XP no service pack home runs pretty good as well. going to update to SP2 as i cant use internet explorer to even download firefox.

PS. Photo kept failing to upload.

So here is what system profiler says:

Model:pIONEER DVD -RW DVR -108
REVISION: 1.14
DETACHABLE DRIVE: NO
PROTOCAL: ATAPI
UNIT NUMBER: 0
SOCKET TYPE: INTERNAL
LOW POWER POLLING: NO
POWER OFF: NO
 
Intell said:
All DVD drives starting from 1999 onwards can read every type of DVD expect for DVD-RAM. If your eMac is having difficulty reading a DVD, the lens is either dirty, the laser is becoming weak, or the disc is damaged.
Click to expand...

Lasers can become weak?
 
weckart said:
Presumably, since Verbatim et al find it economically viable to continue to manufacture them. Mind you, you could say the same about optical media in general.
Click to expand...

Optical media? How about tapes?

I was in a national chain pharmacy the other day and they were still selling VHS tapes. This wasn't a mom and pop pharmacy that has had these sitting on the shelf for 20 years, this was CVS where every inch of retail space is extremely valuable. I don't think I've seen a VCR in a good 5 years except at my grandparents house. My mom used to own a 2009 Lexus ES350, that year and model is the last vehicle in the U.S. to come with a cassette player (probably because it's an old fart car).

Remember LaserDisks? Record sized movie discs. Half way through you would have to flip the disk over.

Sorry for getting off topic. I'm too nostalgic.
 
poiihy said:
Lasers can become weak?
Click to expand...

Yup. They can give up the ghost completely, too. That and a combination of poor quality dyes on writable media that fade/degrade over time makes for unreadable discs. Another potential problem is the azimuth setting on the laser carriage. I have a Powerbook 1400, which struggles to read discs. The azimuth setting is clearly off but getting it correct is a battle of trial and error.

A.Goldberg said:
Optical media? How about tapes?
Click to expand...

All of our pound shops still sell both VHS and cassette tapes.
 
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