Want to highlight a helpful answer? Upvote!

Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User profile for user: jtfey
jtfey Author
User level: Level 1
20 points

Optical drive woes — driver, firmware or something else

I have a 1.25GHz MDD G4 PowerMac. The OEM optical drive stopped working and I had a Sony CRX230ED available, so I put the Sony drive in the Mac. I can open and close the optical drive using the eject key from an Apple keyboard, but no other functions are available.

The G4 is running OS 10.4.11.

Is this a driver issue, a firmware issue or something else?

Thanks.

17" 2.4GHz MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Mar 8, 2010 12:04 PM

Reply
4 replies
User profile for user: Daniel W
Daniel W
User level: Level 2
165 points

Mar 8, 2010 2:59 PM in response to Texas Mac Man

I have an NEC DVD burner installed in mine - it was pulled from an old Dell box and is listed as PC only. It works just fine - apparently the generic DVD driver that comes with OS X is acceptable.

One thing you might check is the jumper settings. ATA/IDE drives have a little jumper on back, next to the power cable plug, which you need to set for it to work properly. Is this the only DVD drive in the Mac? If so, you'll need to set the jumpers for "Master" or "Single" - there's a little diagram on the drive somewhere that shows you the configuration you'll need. This has solved issues with DVD drives in my G4s.

If that doesn't fix it, you may be out of luck.

Daniel
Reply
User profile for user: jtfey
jtfey Author
User level: Level 1
20 points

Mar 8, 2010 3:09 PM in response to Daniel W

Daniel,

I looked at that right away. It was set on Master and I moved it to Cable Select. It is the only optical drive on the Mac.

What's funny is that it worked when I first installed it. It read the DVD, etc. This G4 was being recycled for another purpose in our business so I did a clean install on it (using Target Disk Mode) and now it doesn't work.

Apple System Profiler sees the drive, correctly lists it as a Sony CRX230ED drive and correctly lists it on the ATA bus. But's that about as far as I get.

I'm not quite ready to give up, maybe I'll have to.

Thanks.
Reply

Optical drive woes — driver, firmware or something else

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.
Learn more Sign up