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My Superdrive is screwed, isn't it?

Jethryn Freyman

Jethryn Freyman

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Aug 9, 2007
2,329
3
Australia
Seen it dozens of times on other Macs, it churns for a bit, then spits it out. DVD-R, DVD+R, blank or not, CD-R, blank or not, Leopard installer DVD...

It's a Pioneer drive in my G5, the original as far as I can tell, for the past six months or so I've had its' power supply splitter with a splitter cable for to provide the extra power needed for my GPU. Optical drive still worked fine after that.

Anyways, the only disc it *did* recognise was once of those bristled laser head cleaning ones, it shows up as an Audio CD, DVD Player said it couldn't detect readable media, VLC gets stuck on track 8 out of the 9, 8 being the cleaning track. No errors showed up before that, and the first track, which were the audio instructions, played in VLC fine. Using Sound Studio, opening with any of the .aiff files on the disc gives a "x.aiff" cannot be opened error.

Code: 
3/03/13 10:56:26 AM kernel Debug SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x03, ASC = 0x11, ASCQ = 0x06 
3/03/13 10:56:26 AM kernel Debug SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x03, ASC = 0x11, ASCQ = 0x06 
3/03/13 10:56:33 AM kernel Debug SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x03, ASC = 0x11, ASCQ = 0x06 
3/03/13 10:56:33 AM kernel Debug SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x03, ASC = 0x11, ASCQ = 0x06
3/03/13 10:56:40 AM kernel Debug SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x03, ASC = 0x11, ASCQ = 0x06 
3/03/13 10:56:40 AM kernel Debug SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x03, ASC = 0x11, ASCQ = 0x06 
3/03/13 10:56:47 AM kernel Debug SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x03, ASC = 0x11, ASCQ = 0x06 
3/03/13 10:56:47 AM kernel Debug SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x03, ASC = 0x11, ASCQ = 0x06 
3/03/13 10:56:26 AM [0x0-0x83083].org.videolan.vlc[1000] Notice [0x16c5c784] cdda access error: could not read block 80850 
3/03/13 10:56:26 AM [0x0-0x83083].org.videolan.vlc[1000] Notice [0x16c5c784] cdda access error: cannot read sector 80850 
3/03/13 10:56:40 AM [0x0-0x83083].org.videolan.vlc[1000] Notice [0x16c5c784] cdda access error: could not read block 80851 
3/03/13 10:56:40 AM [0x0-0x83083].org.videolan.vlc[1000] Notice [0x16c5c784] cdda access error: cannot read sector 80851 
3/03/13 10:56:54 AM [0x0-0x83083].org.videolan.vlc[1000] Notice [0x16c5c784] cdda access error: could not read block 80852 
3/03/13 10:56:54 AM [0x0-0x83083].org.videolan.vlc[1000] Notice [0x16c5c784] cdda access error: cannot read sector 80852
^ all of that repeated in blocks, stuck on track 8 at 15 minutes and 51 seconds.
When quitting VLC:
3/03/13 11:49:47 AM kernel Debug disk5: I/O error.
 
External drives perform great and I would without a doubt make SURE you get one with a good warranty I just bought a cheapo on ebay and it was awesome for about 10 times then it quit reading I spent $10 to send it back and they said we tested your item and we can send u the same one back or refund your money so I would buy local at best buy or something....Sorry had to vent that!
 
g4manimac said:
External drives perform great and I would without a doubt make SURE you get one with a good warranty I just bought a cheapo on ebay and it was awesome for about 10 times then it quit reading I spent $10 to send it back and they said we tested your item and we can send u the same one back or refund your money so I would buy local at best buy or something....Sorry had to vent that!
Click to expand...
Yeah Officeworks just a few mintues' drive away has CD/DVD dual layer burners, USB 2 external, for $29, since my iMac has also died and since optical drives seem to be dying out as do old optical drives themselves, since that's just the nature of mechanical components, it's a decent involvement.

I'll do a write up on any experiences I have, I'm thinking of going for an external drive, getting another 5x USB 2.0 PCI card, and using the Ultra ATA/100 interface that the interal superdrive had for a small SSD.
 
Why not just buy another inernal from eBay..Apple used IDE all the way until 2008. I got one earlier this year for $7
 
GermanyChris said:
Why not just buy another inernal from eBay..Apple used IDE all the way until 2008. I got one earlier this year for $7
Click to expand...
I might, but since I've got another Mac with a dead drive and the rest of my extended family hound me to burn stuff for them, it might be nice to have a portable one to send around.

That said, good idea guys, I'll look around. I checked OWC a while ago, brand new drives were going for about $40, I'll see what I can eBay up though :)
 
Jethryn Freyman said:
I might, but since I've got another Mac with a dead drive and the rest of my extended family hound me to burn stuff for them, it might be nice to have a portable one to send around.

That said, good idea guys, I'll look around. I checked OWC a while ago, brand new drives were going for about $40, I'll see what I can eBay up though :)
Click to expand...

I'd probably do both, the internal to replace the broken one. The external to give to folks to save wear and tear on the "new" internal
 
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