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Pioneer DVR-109, no cd burn in iPhoto?

A

alphaone

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 12, 2003
300
0
Hey everyone I have another question:

I recently got a Pioneer DVR-109 from newegg, updated it to the latest firmware (1.40) with my pc, put it in the top spot on my MDD and set it as master, and installed the latest patchburn. Everything seems to be working just fine, I even burned a DVD using iDVD (I have iLife '05) but I can't seem to get it to burn an photo cd using iPhoto. Even though I have a blank cd in the drive it says no media found. And if I try again it'll eject the combo drive which I have installed on the bottom bay. Why won't iPhoto recognize my 109?
 
alphaone said:
Hey everyone I have another question:

I recently got a Pioneer DVR-109 from newegg, updated it to the latest firmware (1.40) with my pc, put it in the top spot on my MDD and set it as master, and installed the latest patchburn. Everything seems to be working just fine, I even burned a DVD using iDVD (I have iLife '05) but I can't seem to get it to burn an photo cd using iPhoto. Even though I have a blank cd in the drive it says no media found. And if I try again it'll eject the combo drive which I have installed on the bottom bay. Why won't iPhoto recognize my 109?
Click to expand...

interesting, i've got the same drive in my ol' G4 400, no updates to firmware, ilife '05 all right out of the box and it worked fine. maybe an issue with a newer firmware version and the operating system? why did you upgrade the firmware was there an issue? sometimes it's best to test it before the upgrade, can you un-upgrade (if that's a word) - uninstall.
 
Well I was reading the drive reports on xlr8yourmac and everyone was updating their firmware so i figured i would too...

iPhoto is the only thing that's giving me trouble though.
 
If, when you click the "burn" icon, your combo drive pops open, then that is the drive it's trying to burn to. I'm not at home to check out iPhoto '05, but at least in '04 it doesn't have any way to select the drive, unlike iDVD and iTunes, so I'm not sure what to tell you. I'll bet, though, if you unhook your old drive and try it, it'll work properly, since the'll only be one drive in the system for it to default to.

Question: Is your 109 set as master or slave? If it's slave, perhaps iPhoto defaults to the Master drive if there are two burners available.
 
Makosuke said:
If, when you click the "burn" icon, your combo drive pops open, then that is the drive it's trying to burn to. I'm not at home to check out iPhoto '05, but at least in '04 it doesn't have any way to select the drive, unlike iDVD and iTunes, so I'm not sure what to tell you. I'll bet, though, if you unhook your old drive and try it, it'll work properly, since the'll only be one drive in the system for it to default to.

Question: Is your 109 set as master or slave? If it's slave, perhaps iPhoto defaults to the Master drive if there are two burners available.
Click to expand...
The 109 is set to cable select, as is the combo. The 109 is in the top bay and the combo in the bottom, so it should consider the 109 to be master... And in '05 also, it doesn't have a way to select the drive.

It seems that it just doesn't recognize any media in the 109 on the first try. Then on the second try it tried to go to the combo, which is why it ejects it.
 
Hmm... follow up questions:

1) If you don't have any media loaded, and you click the burn icon in iPhoto, which drive opens? That'll tell you which one it's looking at initially.

2) Have you tried burning a CD with the Finder or iTunes? If that doesn't work, something's wonky (either with Patchburn, or perhaps even your drive--I've had bum Pioneer drives that would only read and/or write one type of media more than once). If it does, then it's just iPhoto that's having the issues.
 
Makosuke said:
Hmm... follow up questions:

1) If you don't have any media loaded, and you click the burn icon in iPhoto, which drive opens? That'll tell you which one it's looking at initially.

2) Have you tried burning a CD with the Finder or iTunes? If that doesn't work, something's wonky (either with Patchburn, or perhaps even your drive--I've had bum Pioneer drives that would only read and/or write one type of media more than once). If it does, then it's just iPhoto that's having the issues.
Click to expand...
1) The both open at the same time :eek: lol Could that mean something's wrong?

2) I haven't tried burning any cds with finder or itunes. But i have burned a DVD with iDVD and a CD with toast (what i ended up doing after iPhoto wouldn't work). And I'm running kinda low on blank cds so i really don't feel like trying burning one with finder or itunes if i don't really need to... But if you really think that'll determine what's wrong then i'll do it.
 
Hmm... not sure what both opening simultaneously means.

As for the test, an iTunes burn would at the very least tell you if the drive is being properly recognized as supported by the OS, and that it's physically working properly. (Note, though, that if you try this you apparently need to set the burn rate in iTunes to 24x or it'll fail halfway through; this according to XLR8YourMac--I was just looking at reports on this drive since it's down to $62 at NewEgg).

Here's another thing you can try, though: Open iTunes, select your drive, and try to get it to burn to a CD that already has something on it; it should spit the disc back out and tell you that it's not blank, which will at least tell you that the drive is being recognized. It's worth trying in iTunes, since you can select the drive specifically, but you should also try the same thing in iPhoto when it opens both drives--put in a full disc and close that drive, and see what it does.
 
alphaone said:
And I'm running kinda low on blank cds so i really don't feel like trying burning one with finder or itunes if i don't really need to...
Click to expand...

This is why CD-RWs are so handy.

Anyways. I will try burning to see if I have any issues. I just got my 109 installed tonight and am burning a DVD right now using Popcorn. So far so good.
 
Interesting.

iPhoto on my system also refuses to use the DV-109 - instead it opens my combo drive, which I left installed. I'm not going to bother taking it out to see what would happen, but I am surprised it doesn't seem to want to use the 109, since I have mine set to master.

iTunes politely asked me if I wanted to use the 109, I happily obliged and all was well there.

iDVD allows me to select either my external (for sale ) or the 109.

Seems to be an issue with iPhoto??? :confused:

Not that I ever burn photo cds...
 
kingjr3 said:
Interesting.

iPhoto on my system also refuses to use the DV-109 - instead it opens my combo drive, which I left installed. I'm not going to bother taking it out to see what would happen, but I am surprised it doesn't seem to want to use the 109, since I have mine set to master.

iTunes politely asked me if I wanted to use the 109, I happily obliged and all was well there.

iDVD allows me to select either my external (for sale ) or the 109.

Seems to be an issue with iPhoto??? :confused:

Not that I ever burn photo cds...
Click to expand...
Seems like you're having exactly the same problem I'm having.
 
Isn't that interesting. If you feel like doing some experimentation, alphaone, there are two things you might try just to see what happens:

a) Try just unplugging the IDE cable from your older burner and see if iPhoto tries to use the 109. That would tell you whether it's that it just doesn't like the burner, or it's dural-burner code is funky and not working properly.

b) If it will burn to the 109 when it's the only drive in the system, you could try reversing the two burners, making the 109 slave and the old one master. If it then goes to the 109, then it tells you that iPhoto uses the slave drive if there are two drives present, which wouldn't make a whole lot of sense but could at least in theory be related to some older Mac configuration that shipped that way.
 
kingjr3 said:
Interesting.

iPhoto on my system also refuses to use the DV-109 - instead it opens my combo drive, which I left installed. I'm not going to bother taking it out to see what would happen, but I am surprised it doesn't seem to want to use the 109, since I have mine set to master.

iTunes politely asked me if I wanted to use the 109, I happily obliged and all was well there.

iDVD allows me to select either my external (for sale ) or the 109.

Seems to be an issue with iPhoto??? :confused:

Not that I ever burn photo cds...
Click to expand...

Alpha, just an update. I no longer have this issue since installing iLife '05.

Have you tried deleting preferences for iPhoto?
 
kingjr3 said:
Alpha, just an update. I no longer have this issue since installing iLife '05.

Have you tried deleting preferences for iPhoto?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried it and it appears to have fixed the problem :) Thanks everyone!
 
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