SOSD: New Superdrive Woe

No news yet. My field trip to the computer store got postponed for the day.

I'm posting because I just noticed in my SysProf that two lines re: the NEC drive are different from when I originally installed the drive (the entire profile is in the first post of this thread). I don't think these two lines mean anything important, but just in case, I figured I'd throw them into the mix:

Burn Support: Yes (Unsupported)
Profile Path: None

That's how it reads now. If it's nothing, just ignore it.

I'll be back asap.

ps-- forgot to list in the last post that I also verified & repaired permissions after the Cache cleaning (as per Gary's suggestion) -> no joy.

Duke--

You were tempted to join in b/c of my offer of drinks, right? ; )

Very interesting. Gary posted something on another thread a while ago about RAM "going bad" and that was the first I had ever heard about it. Somewhere in my Finder/NEC ****, the thought crossed my mind that RAM was involved, but I never said anything.. I'm glad you brought it up!

The RAM in my QS hasn't been changed (or touched?) since it was initially installed c. 2001.

Is there anyway to check or do diagnostics to see if it went off?

All three chips are 512MB PC133-333 SDRAM. Same make; which I forget, but I can take a peek if it has any bearing on this issue.

Another thought I had never given voice to is: could my G4 simply be overwhelmed by all the additions I have recently done? It was working fine with its original ATA drives, a FW drive and a 250GB SATA drive (and card).

Part of the last big upgrade (with the superdrive) was (in this order):

1. A new internal 120 GB ATA drive that I use for the startup drive and which replaced one of the two original 80GB drives that came with the G4.*
2. Another internal 250GB SATA drive.
3. The NEC optical drive.

I did these installs in phases: installing, then running for a while to see if all was well. Without problems, I proceeded to the next install, etc. The NEC was the last addition, and that's when things got odious with Finder.

With so many users similarly maxing out their G4's, I can't imagine my configuration is a problem, but at this point, my imagination is pretty suspect.

Any chance all of this somehow 'overloaded' something like the RAM?

I still can't get my head around why the NEC drive works sometimes (e.g reading DVD's & CD's, and sometimes writing to CD's & DVD's -- like after a reinstall.) Also, I have been baffled by why this drive is such a workhorse for others, and for me it only likes my HP DVD-R's and indiscriminate CD-R's? If it's a bad/faulty drive, I figure it should just dislike everything I throw at it (and leave Finder alone), right?

What does everyone think about the RAM theory?

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* the original startup drive was cloned with CCC to the other ATA drive, an 80GB WD that came with the machine. I mention this for no particular reason other than paranoia & throwing in the kitchen sink. The startup disc has been set to the new ATA drive throughout this ordeal.

One last kitchen sink: my SysProf has never recognized my SATA card, but I never gave this much thought. I think I saw on a post once that SysProf is notorious for selective reporting.

I've tried all types of media:
CD-R's: Imation, Verbatim, 3 kinds of generic, khypermedia, maxell
DVD-R's: HP's, Verbatim, 2 kinds of generic

all of these media work particularly well at scaring crows or keeping the attention of babies when individually tied to a coat hanger with different lengths of string.

The HP's fly the furthest.

Thanks for jumping into this thread & let me know if any of my plight sounds familiar... and more importantly, you figured out a fix. ; )

-Mark

This post is directed to cjdavis, but there's a new twist at the end of it for those of you who have been following along.

Hi. Thanks for posting the firmware. I googled NEC, firmware & the drive model last week & didn't find them so I appreciate the links. I ended up going to the page (above) that Jeff sent me & flashed the drive with 1.W6. I think I listed that in a previous post, as well as my bad luck with iDVD & Finder (iTunes did work). I'm not sure if you are getting all of the posts in this thread, there are close to 30 by now & some of them include the various ways I have failed to get my drive to work. Let me know if there is any information you don't see & I'll post it asap.

The new twist is this:
I usually use DVD Studio Pro to burn my video discs, but in the interests of NEC-testing expediency, I did a quick one in iDVD4 which I have been using as the "test" program for the DVD-R's. I just read today that iDVD4 doesn't recognize any drives other than Pioneer... without a little hack. Well, that seemed like a smoking gun... I did the hack, but still, no joy. Also, as I write, I'm trying to burn a DVD-R in an external drive... so far, not much promise. I am using Imation 8x media, a Plextor drive & iDVD (with the hack). If this burn fails, I will go into DVDSP & try a burn from there, as iDVD could be a major contributor to my problems... it is not a common denominator, however, so I can't jump to any neat conclusions just yet.

I didn't get a new internal drive because the choices here in Spain (at the 3 superstores I went to) were pretty pathetic. Still, if this Plextor (the only FW external I could find) doesn't work, I will bite the bullet & try whatever internal drive I can get my hands on.

As I finished writing that last paragraph, iDVD crashed just as it got to the burning phase of its burn sequence... I relaunched iDVD immediately, and the Plextor is spinning away furiously at my side although iDVD is no longer in burn mode... of course, it doesn't want to eject the disc now that its done making noise; even though there is an external 'eject' button, it is not responding.. I've got some seriously bad DVD burner mojo.

Ok. I'm going to post this before I restart, again, to retrieve the disc from the drive... if anything miraculous happens, like it successfully burned, I'll post again. If not, I'll write more after I find a new internal drive & test it.

ps-- add to the list of things I have tried with no positive results: after the last (NEC unsuccessful) archive & install of Tiger, I did a clean install, erasing the target drive first. Still, no luck.

The Plextor coastered the Imation disc; it burned about a half cm of the disc before quitting. I'm gonna go try DVDSP before I go shopping again.