HELP: ppc mini's dvdr/cdrw drive no longer reads iso9660

Hello all

My original mac mini is protected by a belkin surge protector, however, I was in the middle of writing an email, when there was sudden loss of power for about five seconds. I was running slackintosh linux on the mini at the time... upon reboot, aiport no longer connected, and iso9660 would no longer mount. I confess I am a tinkerer, and the partition running slackintosh was formatted with the xfs filesystem--because I like xfsdump and xfscopy, and it is very fast--but the one problem with xfs is that it doesn't like sudden loss of power(I knew this, but was living dangerously, hoping to procure a UPS soon), and I attributed the new instability to the powerloss, and decided to start clean, by following the following procedure:

I inserted my original macmini dvd, and started up with the option key held down, and selected the hardware test--all tests passed, thought it doesn't test the optical drive.

I then rebooted into same dvd, and opened disk utility and reformatted the internal drive, with the option to write zeros to the selected--figured it couldn't hurt to rezero, even though it should have nothing to do with this problem.

Then I reinstalled os x 10.3 from same dvd, and immediately followed with 10.4 dvd's install.

So now I'm totally apple, on a totally clean drive, and still iso9660 cds will not mount. Sometimes it reports a blank cd was inserted, and othertimes it says they're unreadable.

To further complicate matters, I forgot to leave the heat on in my office when I went on vacation last winter, and I think my mini may have experienced temperatures below freezing--after that, the dvdr/cdrw drive (Model: MATSHITACD-RW CW-8124, Revision: DACD), stopped burning cds, but it has been reading dvds and all types of cds this past year without issues... still, drive had burning failure before said loss of power.

However, I feel it odd that it only lost iso9660. It still plays and reads dvds; it booted a panther startup cd; it plays audio cds. But iso9660s that open up on other computers, including my wife's g3powerbook, fail to mount on this mini.

Stumped to sadness 😟

--Ev

ppc, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Jan 26, 2008 2:42 AM

Reply
3 replies

Jan 27, 2008 8:46 PM in response to damfair

Thanks for responding.

I came to the same conclusion. And if I open it up for an optical drive replacement, then I might as well put in more RAM and replace the 56K modem with an second etherenet, if possible. Man... it just doesn't really seem that old to me... are there any superdrives that last over three years?

I had just been hoping that there existed some marginal chance that the firmware on the drive could be reflashed or updated, in case it was just firmware corruption.

But in the end, $100 and a few days is probably the quickest solution.

Thanks.

Jan 28, 2008 5:54 AM in response to Everett Fuller

And if I open it up for an optical drive replacement, then I might as well put in more RAM and replace the 56K modem with an second etherenet, if possible.


The optical drive replacement is pretty straight forward, as is RAM (a single 1Gb stick is the maximum possible on your PPC system), but there is no way to swap out the modem for a second ethernet port.

Man... it just doesn't really seem that old to me... are there any superdrives that last over three years?


There are plenty of slot loading superdrives in Mac systems which have lasted more than 3 years, despite the fact that slot loading drives are often regarded as inferior to more standard tray-loading devices. Drives do fail of course, likely not helped by power outages and fluctuations, or 'tinkering'!

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HELP: ppc mini's dvdr/cdrw drive no longer reads iso9660

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