The MDD should show both optical drives (mine does); the first and easiest thing I would try is to blow out both drives with a can of compressed gas. Sometimes a little dust gets in and interferes with the laser just enough to mess with you.
On Feb 3, 5:48 am, Deiniol ap Deiniol <autolycus.mercat...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Hi Group: > When I got my dual 1.2GHz MDD a few months ago, I found it had two > optical drives fitted, although only the upper one was functional. > Clicking the 'open drive' icon showed one drive: the button always > opened the top one and sometimes the lower one would open too. As I > had it out of service today to install my newly acquired SCSI card > (and that's another story - showed up in Profiler but no OSX drivers > available), I decided to replace the non-functioning drive. > I removed the drive cage, and then I noticed that both drives were > jumpered as 'Master'. > "Ahah!" I thought....that's why drive 1 isn't working, so I jumpered > it as slave and restarted the machine. > And suddenly I had two DVD drives showing when I clicked on the "open > Drive" button.and reacting individually....."Great" I thought, but > drive 1 still wouldn't recognise any optical media I put in it. > So pretty obviously borked....possibly a non-operative laser...the > drive is a Sony combo drive dated October 2003 so quite likely to have > expired. > Having an old DVD ROM that came out of my dead Sawtooth, I decided to > try that. > Jumpered as 'Slave' I fitted it and tried a reboot. > No joy, and I no longer had two drives showing in the drive open > button. > But I did have another DVD ROM that I had bought BNIB from a thrift > shop some months ago. > That went in, showed up in System Profiler as a Lite-on DVD SHD - > 16P1S rev. GS07, but again was not showing on the button, and I could > only open it by pressing the 'open' button on the front of the drive. > But when I put a DVD in I got the 'Assign Region Code" screen, so that > was set to R1, because I have quite a few of those, and since the > machine has the 128MB GeForce Ti Graphics card (what a monster: > straddles the PRAM battery and runs the length of the machine!) > driving a 21" Mac CRT monitor, it's excellent for media (and I have a > choice of MacPro speakers or LaCie Firewire speakers so it sounds OK > too!). > > It plays perfectly, and will open by ejecting the disc from the > Desktop. > I watched my just-bought "In the heat of the night" (twice: second > time with commentary - that's why I like R1 discs!): I then ripped it > with Mac the Ripper, and that file plays absolutely perfectly with > VLC. > This new drive doesn't show in Disk utility either, but the other > drive (TSST corp CD/DVDW TS-H552U rev. US06) does and (almost) always > has worked fine. > I don't know if it's relevant, but I got an unopened copy of iLife > 08 last week, and the DVD of that would NOT mount on this machine > (tried 3 or 4 times, including after a reboot - sounded like it was > spinning up then down again: the iWork trial CD; also brand new, > opened fine, as did two different movie DVD's) although this iLife > DVD worked perfectly on my G4 iMac > So any thoughts as to what may be going on here? I tried resetting > PRAM on the off chance....I know clutching at a straw!...obviously no > difference, and also tried a safe boot in case it was a cache issue: > again zilch! > > Running 10.5.8 with 2GB memory, and two 160 GB hard drives, one > original one new.. > > I did try drive 0 as slave and 1 as master - no change, also both as > cable select - no difference. > Is it perhaps a firmware issue, either with the G4 or the non-Apple > drives perhaps? > Hoping someone here has a solution to this little mystery. > > Dan -- 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 g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
