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IDE/ATA Optical Drives for G4/G5 Towers

socamx

socamx

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 7, 2004
360
16
the pale blue dot
I'm curious what drives people purchase / use on their G5 and G4 towers when they need a new Superdrive. Searching the internet always yields results for threads and discussions that are 10+ years old, and linking to product pages that are long gone.

I have a trash-heap G5 that I've revived to life from death, and I figured out its original drive does not spin up. The tray opens but the discs do not spin when closed. I have a basic CD drive in it for now to get it booted into Gentoo Linux but I'd really like to find as modern as possible DVD drive that can work in OS X and boot the computer.

So before I potentially waste money on ebay buying old, pulled drives, I'm curious if there's any suggestions out there for 5.25" IDE/ATA Superdrives before I do.
 
I usually just pull a DVD drive from a PC. No really, that's how I've ended up with most of my DVD 'SuperDrives'.

I've only had one that refused to work, no matter what I did with it.

Basically, there is nothing special about this. Almost any PATA optical drive will work. Apple just had to name them something different.
 
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All but one of my PPC towers feature their original optical drives. When the stock unit on my Sawtooth failed, I replaced it with a Pioneer DVR-110D and whilst as @eyoungren has attested, practically any PATA optical drive will work, IIRC, I needed to install Patchburn to enable full functionality.

I've been very happy with the drive - especially after flashing it to RPC1 so that with the help of Region X, I could watch whichever DVDs I choose without hindrance from the MPAA via the region counter and lock. :) It's also quite adept at rescuing information from scratched discs, which was a godsend for when one of my pals would donate his DVD films that looked like he'd used them as makeshift shields...
 
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Out of curiosity, I once tried attaching a SATA to IDE adapter to my IDE optical drive and used it as a SATA drive. It worked and was also bootable.

But what I'm not sure (since that's long time ago) is whether I connected the drive to a PCI SATA card or I attached another SATA to IDE adapter to the MDD's ATA/66 port to get SATA out of it.

Anyway, I think any new SATA optical drive will work with an adapter.
 
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I thought about doing a SATA to IDE adapter, wasn't sure if anything funny or weird would happen. SATA drives are a dime a dozen right now and cheap as hell, so that would be a nice alternative than to chase down a quality ATA/IDE drive.
 
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TheShortTimer said:
install Patchburn
Click to expand...
AFAIK, required only for Tiger.

As for me - when I used DVD drive in my Quad, it was LG GSA (H22N? don't remember correctly), installed as replacement instead of Pioneer DRV112D. (Now both of them removed & there lives 4-drive SAS cage with 4 HDDs :D ). When I need CD - using external drive(s), FW- or USB-connected. (By some reasons not all Linux-distros got built in kernel modules for firewire, even they are posttioned as PowerMac installation media).
 
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