Just arrived from eBay: DVD-RAM

[Anonymous Freak]

Just got an original Apple-labeled DVD-RAM drive, thanks eBay! $30 shipped.

What astounds me is how insanely heavy this bugger is. Easily triple the weight of the Blu-ray drive I have sitting loose next to it at the moment.

 

[Quadraman]

Just got an original Apple-labeled DVD-RAM drive, thanks eBay! $30 shipped.
What astounds me is how insanely heavy this bugger is. Easily triple the weight of the Blu-ray drive I have sitting loose next to it at the moment.

I'm just curious, why a DVD-RAM? Don't they use unique discs that are incompatible with other recordable DVD formats? I would think that blank discs are getting hard to find at this point since that's a blue and white/Yikes! era peripheral.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Just got an original Apple-labeled DVD-RAM drive, thanks eBay! $30 shipped.
What astounds me is how insanely heavy this bugger is. Easily triple the weight of the Blu-ray drive I have sitting loose next to it at the moment.

I'm just curious, why a DVD-RAM? Don't they use unique discs that are incompatible with other recordable DVD formats? I would think that blank discs are getting hard to find at this point since that's a blue and white/Yikes! era peripheral.

You can still buy DVD-RAM discs at most better-equipped electronics chains. Why? Because. Why do I collect Macs in the first place? Because.

Most modern DVD±RW drives can read (and many can also write,) DVD-RAM. And DVD-RAM drives can read some DVD-R discs.

 

[coius]

is this the drive that is slot-loading/cartridge loading? If it's that one (the one commonly sold with the G3's) it's probably not gonna work with the newer DVD-RAM discs. Is is SCSI? Mine is (50-pin) and requires the special cartridges that only do 2.4GB RAM Disc/per side. Which means, while I may use a full 4.7/9GB Disc, the DVD RAM drive tops at 2.4GB per side.

So just be warned

 

[ppuskari]

Awesome. I feel like I'm connecting with long lost brothers or something.

I get asked at least 3 or 4 times a month similar stuff about why on earth do I collect or tweak, or buy the stuff I do, or even why I'm still using it! That was when I brought in my G1 Scroll Wheel 10G ipod.. IT works great, sounds MUCH better than my wife's 2g ipod touch, and just "because!!!!!"

Actually there's a reason why the older G1 and G2 Ipods sound better. Thank you Mr Jobs and your middle aged hearing range.

 

[Bunsen]

Is is SCSI? Mine is (50-pin)

Nice. So, IIRC, you can mount that on any old SCSI Mac and it appears as a hard drive?

 

[coius]

Not sure, I haven't really used the DVD-RAM cartridge I have in an old mac. I should try it. I have an external enclosure and that PowerBook 3400c and see what it does. What OS are you referring to? It needs to have the DVD Extension and Disc Authoring though.

Toast should handle it maybe, it seems to work with DVD-RAM

 

[Bunsen]

It needs to have the DVD Extension and Disc Authoring though.

Are you sure? ISTR reading that once the disk is formatted (HFS or HFS+) it can be mounted read/write on any Mac. I'm currently googling for confirmation.

/ETA/

Mac OS 9: How to initialize or format a disk

Initializing a DVD-RAM disc
To initialize a DVD-RAM disc, follow these steps:

1. Insert the disc into the DVD-RAM drive.

2. Open the Special menu and choose Erase Disk.

3. Select a format for the disc in the Format pop-up menu.

However:

Apple's DVD driver / works only with an internal IDE DVD drive / Software Architects' / DVD-RAM TuneUp software. In addition to providing the necessary drivers, this software lets you format DVD-RAM media in both HFS / and HFS+ / as well as in UDF.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Whee!

My 2-3X Panasonic DVD-RAM discs (4.7 GB, no cartridge,) work just fine in OS X Tiger. Disk Utility formats them no problem.

Disc is recognized in 8.6, but won't format, nor recognize one formatted in Tiger, even with OS 9 Drivers. (It prompts to format, but immediately fails.)

Disc is recognized in 9.1, as formatted in Tiger; and can format, read, and write without problems.

DVD Video discs play just fine in OS X, but not in 8.6-9.2.2. ('No decoder' error, and os9forever appears to be down at the moment, so I can't download the fix.)

My current hardware configuration is:

B&W G3, 500 MHz G4 upgrade

128 MB RAM (I scavenged the RAM from this system to put in another a while ago, and haven't gotten around to putting more in yet.)

ATI Radeon Mac Edition (the original, before they started giving numbers to the Radeon series.)

Apple-firmware DVD-RAM drive

Apple-stock ZIP drive

Original 13 GB Apple-firmware ATA hard drive, five partitions:

2 GB - Mac OS 8.6/10.0.4

2 GB - Mac OS 9.0.4/10.1.5

2 GB - Mac OS 9.1/10.2.8

2.5 GB - Mac OS 9.2.2/10.3.9

3.5 GB - Mac OS 10.4.11