Paul wrote:
> Considering that G3 iMacs sell for about $25-$50, it's certainly not
> worth buying just a drive for $100, no matter how new and shiny it is.
> I suppose a firewire DVD drive would be fine, too.
>
> Not all DVD drives can read +R and RW, though that shouldn't matter if
> you're playing commercial pressings.
Did the factory CDRW on the iMacs have the capability to read DVDs? If
not, the OP is talking about a upgrade that gives capability Apple
never did. Which is why the combo drives should be treated as a
special animal (hence the higher price). All the slot load combos I've
seen where not labeled as genuine Apple.
Also, unfortunately, some of us don't have FW. The Indigo iMacs
omitted the port, which is why LEM calls it a "Compromised Mac". With
a CD drive I can't install most Tiger pressings (or even some Panther
pressings), *or* use FW Target Disk mode. Which means I either have to
get DVD capability of some sort, *or* track down that ellusive CD
version of Panther/Tiger.
I think paying $150 for a internal combo drive is a bit rich, but it
depends a lot on how hard-core you are about making your G3 relevant
in an OSX world. For my part, I'm looking seriously at the possibility
of splitting the difference and adding a 4x internal DVD drive, while
saving CDRW until after I get Firewire.
I plan to eventually move from this iMac for a newer one that has FW
ports and a bit faster CPU. I'll salvage the contents from the HD and
the 1 gig of memory I just installed. So it should be a fairly
painless switch to a new machine.
- John
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