the UJ-825 in my powerbook G4 became increasingly fussy over time. cd writing was prettyr reliable, but as for dvd writing, sometimes it would report a successful burn , but the resulting dvd wouldn't read. more often, either the drive would report "can't calibrate the laser for this media" or it would accept the media then fail either during the burn or during the verify. there seemed to be no difference in success rate using either toast platinum or disk utility.
i found a replacement drive on ebay for about $25 IIRC. i used a guide from ifixit.com, which has a wide variety of very detailed and (in my experience) accurate repair guides. i have done several repairs on mac books and a mac book pro, but replacing the superdrive in the power book was the most challenging, so be forewarned. nothing about it was hard, or required any particular technical skills, but just attention to detail and patience. the superdrive appears to be the first thing placed into the case during manufacture, so you need to take out just about everything else in the case in order to remove it. when i use one of the ifixit guides, i print a copy, then tape the screws to the printed copy that are removed in each step. it took about an hour to do this repair, and the new drive works well. ken On Mar 8, 2:01 pm, Kris Tilford <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mar 8, 2011, at 6:38 AM, Jonathan Smith wrote: > > > > > I have a 17" powerbook G4 1.5 with the MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-825 > > superdrive. > > > I am not a frequent burner of dvd/cd's. But I am used to more modern > > drive which don't fuss over what type of media you use. > > > According to it's specs, it reads dvd full stop and burns - and +. > > > I have had it reading from cd's and dvd's, I have yet to burn from it > > though. But it will not recognise a particular dual layer dvd+ I have > > burned. It just spits it out. It also spits out a blank disc of the > > same kind. > > > I have read elsewhere that apple recommend TDK. Have I read correctly, > > that these drives are fussy and only like certain brands of disc? > > > Also, should I be ok to read and write to dvd+ dual layers and if so, > > which work for you best? > > Don't know about media, the specifications of the UJ-825 say that it > can both read & write DVD+ dual-layer media, so this appears to be a > problem with the drive or the media type, most likely the media I'd > guess? > > With respect to media, there are several different dyes used in > different media brands. I've had excellent luck with Verbatim discs > that use the darker dye rather than the cheaper discs with the lighter > dye. Cheap discs seem to fail at a high rate. One thing to consider, > there is supposedly such a thing as a dual-layer rewritable disc which > I've never used, but sounds intriguing if you could actually rewrite > these up to 1,000 times. I'd be surprised if you could rewrite a > single time, but I have very limited experience with rewritable discs, > perhaps they work great? > > I've seen that back in 2007 someone created a patched firmware for > this drive that enables RPC1 "region-free" usage for this drive so > that it can play discs from all regions. Normally region-free flashing > isn't necessary any longer because VLC can play discs from all regions > without flashing, but this particular drive seems to be special and > doesn't work region-free with VLC according to information on this page: > <http://www.pinoymac.org/forum/archive/index.php?t-18462.html> > > Flashing a drive in a Mac may be impossible or difficult. I don't see > a Mac flash program, but it may be possible to boot the Mac into > Target Disk mode and attach the Mac to a PC via a Firewire cable and > then flash the drive from the PC using the Windows flash program (I > don't know if it supports Firewire flashing, so this may be a waste of > time?). If you can't flash it using a PC with the Mac in Target Disk > mode the only alternative would be to remove the drive and place it > into a PC which seems too difficult for a laptop. > > Also, finding the patched firmware may be difficult, and it also my > remove the "Apple" from the identifier, which probably isn't an issue > if you're using 10.4.11 or 10.5.8, but may require "PatchBurn" if you > have any lower level OS. > > Here's a page about the UJ-825 patched firmwware: > <http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=43012> -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
