I'm thinking my Power Mac G5 optical drive has gone bad, as it's experienced great difficulty just reading CDs/DVDs and won't burn them at all, even at a reduced speed. Do I need to be overly specific when looking for a replacement or will any SATA DVD burner do after taking the front panel and front part of the tray off?
-
Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.
Replacing a Power Mac G5 Optical Drive
- Thread starter EvieSigma
- Start date
I believe G5s use IDE optical drives. Probably any drive you can fit in and pop the tray cover off of, so the tray will fit through the slot on the front, should work fine.
If I remember correctly: by the time of the G5 there was an awful lot in terms of needing, like, an Apple-firmware drive.
EDIT: if I had to guess, the G5 situation is as good or better than the G3/G4 situation. Further reading:
If I remember correctly: by the time of the G5 there was an awful lot in terms of needing, like, an Apple-firmware drive.
EDIT: if I had to guess, the G5 situation is as good or better than the G3/G4 situation. Further reading:
Last edited by a moderator:
Franklinstein
Well-known member
Yeah the G5s and (some of) the first Mac Pros used ATA optical drives. Factory units are usually Hitach/LG or Pioneer but sometimes you'll find a Sony or other odd unit in there. For aftermarket units I always look for Pioneer. Pretty much any ATA optical drive will work but the Pioneers generally have full OS X support even if they're not Apple-branded drives.
jessenator
Well-known member
I hope mine doesn't go… 1st gen intel Mac Pro optical drive can't event push down the front drive gate. I have it gaf-taped down, but thankfully it still reads and writes. I found a second one that consistently failed to write any media, even at 1x.
Let me do some poking around at work. We have a boneyard that might have a few 1st gens with opticals (they were servers and probably didn't get much use in the optical dept.)
Let me do some poking around at work. We have a boneyard that might have a few 1st gens with opticals (they were servers and probably didn't get much use in the optical dept.)
jessenator
Well-known member
Good news, I got permission to part the old alum mac pros that are down there! I'll check them out later today.
jessenator
Well-known member
https://imgur.com/a/87gcqz1
Obviously, you don't need the drive tray for the Mac Pro version, but assuming the ATA drive will be recognized on the G5, it should work.
Last edited by a moderator:
jessenator
Well-known member
I'll test it tonight in my Mac Pro to make sure its long rest hasn't had negative effects.
jessenator
Well-known member
Read: pass
--Toast Titanium 7--
Write CD-R: pass
Write DVD-R: pass
Write DL-DVD-R: no media to test :/
opens drive door/flap thingy: pass
I kinda wish I could keep it :/ but I'm a man of my word. PM me if you're interested.
--Toast Titanium 7--
Write CD-R: pass
Write DVD-R: pass
Write DL-DVD-R: no media to test :/
opens drive door/flap thingy: pass
I kinda wish I could keep it :/ but I'm a man of my word. PM me if you're interested.
Last edited by a moderator:
CC_333
Well-known member
IDE optical drives are becoming hard to find! Especially DVD burners (SuperDrives, in Apple-speak).
Fortunately, adapters exist that will allow most SATA optical drives to connect via IDE and vice versa, so it's not an insurmountable problem, except in edge cases where the drive bay is a tight fit or there's some sort of weird incompatibility between the adapter and the interface's controller or firmware.
In other words, with one of these, you can use pretty much any SATA optical drive in your G5, provided there's no compatibility issues.
c
Fortunately, adapters exist that will allow most SATA optical drives to connect via IDE and vice versa, so it's not an insurmountable problem, except in edge cases where the drive bay is a tight fit or there's some sort of weird incompatibility between the adapter and the interface's controller or firmware.
In other words, with one of these, you can use pretty much any SATA optical drive in your G5, provided there's no compatibility issues.
c
jessenator
Well-known member
I wonder if that would work with my spare sata BluRay/DVD-R combo from a Dell I parted out... Don't care about the BluRay functionality at all—no discs in my library. But it saw little use in its life in the PC, so it'd be a good spare.
BR-dvd-r-combo https://imgur.com/a/PjOCYjX
I can't speak to 10.5 and older, but in 10.7 and newer, blu-ray disc drives work fine in OS X. The biggest bummer is that there are no disk copy image templates for blu-ray media. I don't know what the state of bd-r/bd-re in Toast is. At worst, in a PPC, all the DVD stuff will work and it won't really know what to do with the blu-ray stuff.
With USB drives, packet writing BD-RE in Finder on OS X (using BD-RE discs for generic storage, the way you might a floppy or MO) (again, "modern" - I tested this with 10.12/10.13) works, but extremely badly, and is quite unreliable.
With USB drives, packet writing BD-RE in Finder on OS X (using BD-RE discs for generic storage, the way you might a floppy or MO) (again, "modern" - I tested this with 10.12/10.13) works, but extremely badly, and is quite unreliable.
MOS8_030
Well-known member
A little late to this thread but a few years back I installed a Pioneer DVR-115 in my G5. I had to remove the front cover from the drive tray.
It works perfectly in the G5, opens & closes the G5 door without issue.
I have used other model drives (Sony) in other G5's and the tray couldn't push open the G5 drive door without assistance.
It works perfectly in the G5, opens & closes the G5 door without issue.
I have used other model drives (Sony) in other G5's and the tray couldn't push open the G5 drive door without assistance.
Last edited by a moderator:
jessenator
Well-known member
That sounds about right.
Good deal. I'll look into that bridge/converter
