DVD drive in iMac G5

[modplod]

I recently bought a 2004 1.8ghz iMac 20" for a very good price. It came without an operating system and only 256 mb ram. When it arrived I installed 2x1gb sticks of pc 3200 ram and upgraded the hard drive to 400gb, which was a really easy job. I tried installing leopard on the machine but it just kept spitting out the disc. I then tried installing tiger and this went very smoothly and the machine runs very nicely. I have tried other discs, such as iwork and iLife, in the machine but it doesn't like any that I try, just spits them out.

Has anyone had a similar problem? I am resigned to replacing the drive but first wondered if there may be another problem....

 

[uniserver]

if they are burns, they must be DVD -R if they are +R it will spit them back out

 

[coius]

no, they will read any - or +R disc if finalized. after that it's readable on any DVD drive that can read burned discs. It will only burn +R or -R if it supports. Once it's finalized, it will read any format.

Chances are the laser is out of focus or is dying (it could either be the laser or the receiver) which will require you to replace the drive, or if you are daring, get in and adjust the lens or laser intensity.

Try to boot off another machine with Firewire target disc mode. you can use another desktop or laptop with firewire built in (except the Yikes!/B&W G3 which isn't onboard). Try like an intel mac laptop or powerbook. Pop the DVD drive into the laptop, boot it with the "T" key held down and connect a 6-pin FW400 cable between the laptop and the iMac. Hold down the option key on the iMac and select the disc.

Install from that.

 

[modplod]

Thanks for the replies.....I did some checking around and found a replacement drive on amazon for just over $20.....will try that.