Well, the DVD burner arrived today... and there is no joy in Mudville tonight.
First things first -- recently I bought a used iMac/SL 500mHz with built-in
CD-RW. [USB 1.1] I _had_ thought the drive was CD-RW/DVD-ROM but I'm wrong.
This may be a factor in what's happening. This model comes with 2 Firewire
400 ports, which was the reason I did the very slight upgrade from the
iMac/SL 350mHz, no Firewire. I have 512 MB RAM installed at the moment.
I'm running 10.3.9 with the latest upgrades, system was reinstalled after I
switched the drive from old iMac to this one.
Plug-and-Play of the 'new' computer for the new external DVD burner.... not
by a long shot.
Pioneer DVD-RW 110D installed in a generic case. Has one USB 2.0 and two
Firewire 400 ports.
Hooking up the new sealed-in-the-bag Firewire cable to either of the two
Firewire ports on the case to either of the two Firewire ports on the iMac
give the same result in Toast, temporarily. "Unable to write disc -
unwritable." Problem is... there's no disc in the tray. Eject will only
"partially" open the tray, using the button on the drive will only
partially open the tray. The only way to open the tray is to power down,
use the Apple Special Tool aka paperclip. The Busy light continually
flashes, the drive is constantly trying to load the disc.
Hooked up the new sealed-in-the-bag USB cable and everything works, at the
expected USB 1.1. I can mount a CD on the desktop, I can burn a CD at 4x
(the maximum speed.) The CD verified as good.
Back to Firewire -- and back to Flashing Busy light, drive hunting for disc.
The entire time System Profile is telling me it sees the ruddy drive on
both Firewire or USB depending on how I have it set up.
Hook up both cables... no idea if this is a no-no. USB interface is seen, only.
Frustration mounts, I take a screwdriver to the case to see if something is
loose since there might be a slight noise. No idea how to get into this
thing, call neighbour and between the both of us and half an hour later,
we're into the case, it's scratched all to hell and we've broken every clip
inside. BUT we're in!
(Very Important Information -- For future reference for anyone, two strong
paperclips used simultaneously in the small escape holes near the front
will release the front plate, and then continuing two more times down the
side would have popped the case open in under two minutes, with no damage.
Duh!)
Once we're inside, it's very basic. The DVD burner is held in the case via
friction only, no screws. We verify the 3 connections as being tight -
power audio and the ribbon cable. No obvious damage to the Firewire ports.
Neighbour brings down his ASUS DVD-RW drive, we install the circuit board
plate (without the rest of the case), plug everything in.... and the same
results. USB port works, but the Firewire connection won't communicate with
the iMac. System Profile once again sees the drive on the Firewire bus.
Neighbour takes my Pioneer drive to his XP box and everything works.
Replace flimsy ribbon cable.. same result. USB works, Firewire doesn't BUT
Continues to be seen by the System Profiler as being on the Firewire bus.
So where's the malfunction? Is it as simple as this computer can't use a
DVD drive on the Firewire bus?? (Please tell me it ain't so!)
I've swapped out the external power cords with known good ones. I've
swapped the USB cables, the ribbon cables, verified the new drive works on
another computer while a known good drive doesn't work on this one. I'd
love to had an idea what the problem is!
((And the first scratch on the case meant it can't be returned to the
seller, which I probably wouldn't do anyway since I have to pay $29 postage
each way even though there might be a defect. At that point, it's cheaper
to buy a new circuit board or even an entire case.)
Any thoughts, things to try, would be appreciated. And if you have to tell
me this model of iMac can't do a Firewire DVD burner, please be gentle.
Sov
At 7:03 PM -0400 09-13-2005, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Sovereignty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Eric :-)
>>
>> You've exposed yourself as my DVD expert :-) When I'm reading specs on the
>> different DVD drives, I keep hearing of 'chipsets' -- now I thinking the
>> chipsets are mentioned because I've been looking at Firewire enclosures and
>> Firewire externals. (Vaguely rmembering the problem an OS upgrade gave to
>> some external Firewire drives...) Are you up on the various chipsets and
>> why one might be better than the other?
>
> Alas, I am a fake. You evidently know more about chipsets than I
> because I'm not even sure what these chipsets are ;-). I surmise that
> you mean the chips in the controllers for the FW bridge (the interface
> between the IDE drive and the FireWire bus).
>
> Nowadays there seem to be a million and one different FireWire
> enclosures but I suspect that they're variations on only a handful of
> themes. There will be only a few manufacturers making the chips which
> allow an IDE drive to be hooked up to a FW bus but there are a million
> and one little companies who are taking those "chip sets" and making
> FW enclosures.
>
> Now, this is purely conjecture! Hopefully it's correct and will at
> least give you a reasonable chance at getting the right enclosure.
>
> PS You may want to ensure that you get a dual USB/FW enclosure.
--
What's the difference between Vietnam and Iraq? Bush knew how to get out of
Vietnam.
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