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recommend a CD/DVD burner to me (G4 Yikes)?
- Thread starter mraroid
- Start date
For the record, there is a thread here that says that CD-ROM boot works on an Acard 6260m, an ATA/66 card.
If the OP has a working SATA card booting their Mac right now it would seem the simplest thing to do is just slap a SATA CD-ROM drive on it and test it. It's not as if it's a hard to find piece of hardware. Right now I could throw a lawn dart in three different directions for less than 20 feet and hit a SATA CD-ROM drive.
If the OP has a working SATA card booting their Mac right now it would seem the simplest thing to do is just slap a SATA CD-ROM drive on it and test it. It's not as if it's a hard to find piece of hardware. Right now I could throw a lawn dart in three different directions for less than 20 feet and hit a SATA CD-ROM drive.
... I mean, ultimately my point is if the OP is asking FOR SURES if something will work with his envisioned setup he's going to be disappointed unless someone has an exact replica of all the moving parts at hand to try it ahead of time. Ultimately there's a point where you have to just grab the bits and slap it together.
We all kind of went blue in the face saying there's a 99.44% chance that any old random DVD burner should do the needful on the internal port, which is a question much easier to give a mostly-informed response to, when suddenly things switched horses to "Hey, instead could I hang a SATA DVD drive off the nameless controller I got from somewhere and do that instead?". Yikes-motherboarded B&Ws with random SATA controllers have a much smaller sample size if you're fishing for answers for free. A brand new internal SATA burner costs less than $25 with a data cable and molex power adapter, if it's a configuration you want to test it's not a lot of cash to test it.
An obvious point to be made: the OP was worried about having to apply patches: even if a given Pottsylvanian SATA controller mated to a SATA drive results in a system that boots (OS 9 and OS X?) I kind of suspect the iApps are going to not like it any more than they like other third-party drives, and there's a distinct chance they'll like it less. Will burning work at all with that old software? Who knows?
We all kind of went blue in the face saying there's a 99.44% chance that any old random DVD burner should do the needful on the internal port, which is a question much easier to give a mostly-informed response to, when suddenly things switched horses to "Hey, instead could I hang a SATA DVD drive off the nameless controller I got from somewhere and do that instead?". Yikes-motherboarded B&Ws with random SATA controllers have a much smaller sample size if you're fishing for answers for free. A brand new internal SATA burner costs less than $25 with a data cable and molex power adapter, if it's a configuration you want to test it's not a lot of cash to test it.
An obvious point to be made: the OP was worried about having to apply patches: even if a given Pottsylvanian SATA controller mated to a SATA drive results in a system that boots (OS 9 and OS X?) I kind of suspect the iApps are going to not like it any more than they like other third-party drives, and there's a distinct chance they'll like it less. Will burning work at all with that old software? Who knows?
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On my PM 8500 with a G3-400/1M no cards or drives installed other then the TSATA and a generic non Apple DVD/CDRW drive I booted from an Apple retail 7.6.1 CD. I forgot that the TSATA came with a power adapter in the box (or mine did anyway).
Basically the machine just looked for a bootable drive or CD and just booted like it should.
Basically the machine just looked for a bootable drive or CD and just booted like it should.
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Are you saying the machine didn't have a hard disk with a bootable OS on it when you tried this? That doesn't answer the question if holding the "C" key will work.
All.....
I finally have a CD/DVD working in my B&W.
The first thing I did was look in my computer parts/junk box. I found a windows SATA Blu-ray CD/DVD burner. I have a PCI SATA card in my Blue & White, so I plugged the SATA optical drive in, put in my DVD of Tiger, held down the C key and booted. I was unable to boot to the optical drive. But the tiger DVD did appear on my Panther desktop. So I started the install of Tiger from that. The software told me it had to reboot to the DVD to do this install, so I clicked the reboot icon and did not hold down the C key. The B&W booted to the tiger DVD and I did the install. Then I did all the updates. All seems well.
This morning, a Apple branded CD/DVD drive arrived. It is this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mac-Tower-G3-G4-G5-DVD-R-CD-RW-Optical-Super-Drive-DVR-103PA-678-0269-TESTED/192548781788?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
I pulled my SATA optical drive and installed this one. I installed my Tiger DVD, held down the C key and booted. It boot to the Tiger DVD. I did the install of Tiger all over again. After that, I did all the updates.
The windows SATA optical drive was made in 2011. It is quite fast. The apple drive is slow. But it works, and will boot to bootable media if I hold down the C key.
I need to go to this thread to see what all has been posted. Now I wonder if I can buy a SATA CD/DVD drive that will boot if I hold down the C key. If so, I would like to replace my optical drive with a faster one.
Thanks for everyones help. I had no idea a windows optical drive would have a chance of working with this B&W. What a surprise!
mraroid
I finally have a CD/DVD working in my B&W.
The first thing I did was look in my computer parts/junk box. I found a windows SATA Blu-ray CD/DVD burner. I have a PCI SATA card in my Blue & White, so I plugged the SATA optical drive in, put in my DVD of Tiger, held down the C key and booted. I was unable to boot to the optical drive. But the tiger DVD did appear on my Panther desktop. So I started the install of Tiger from that. The software told me it had to reboot to the DVD to do this install, so I clicked the reboot icon and did not hold down the C key. The B&W booted to the tiger DVD and I did the install. Then I did all the updates. All seems well.
This morning, a Apple branded CD/DVD drive arrived. It is this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mac-Tower-G3-G4-G5-DVD-R-CD-RW-Optical-Super-Drive-DVR-103PA-678-0269-TESTED/192548781788?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
I pulled my SATA optical drive and installed this one. I installed my Tiger DVD, held down the C key and booted. It boot to the Tiger DVD. I did the install of Tiger all over again. After that, I did all the updates.
The windows SATA optical drive was made in 2011. It is quite fast. The apple drive is slow. But it works, and will boot to bootable media if I hold down the C key.
I need to go to this thread to see what all has been posted. Now I wonder if I can buy a SATA CD/DVD drive that will boot if I hold down the C key. If so, I would like to replace my optical drive with a faster one.
Thanks for everyones help. I had no idea a windows optical drive would have a chance of working with this B&W. What a surprise!
mraroid
I'd say you've already demonstrated that at least with your particular SATA card no, you can't.
Per Trag's comment, Macintoshes do have a firmware function that you can access with the Startup Disk control panel, or that programs like the Tiger's installer manipulate, that sets a variable in Open Firmware that can point to a properly enumerated device on the OF device tree. That is why you *were* able to boot and install from the Tiger DVD after running the installer from Panther; devices on your SATA card are apparently valid targets for this mechanism and can be set correctly. However, since "C" failed you the first time it's a very reasonable guess that the firmware mechanism that looks for CD-ROM devices when you hold that down only knows to look for them on the internal drive controller's device sub-tree.
Assuming that's the case then, no, no SATA drive will ever work with that "C" alias. If you have some real need for a faster optical drive (why?) but want to retain the "C" booting option (instead of relying on having a working OS install that you can access the Startup Disk control panel) the B&W has two drive bays, you could always install two drives.
(Strictly speaking another option for cold booting would be to drop into Open Firmware with command-option-O-F and manually type a boot command that references the SATA optical device if for some reason you really needed to do a cold boot from optical. Figuring out the device tree entry is an exercise for the reader. You could also simply try holding down the Option key and see if the CD shows up on the graphical boot selector. I don't think any beige Macs support this but I think it's an option on the B&W. I have no idea if the "hold option" UI will find volumes on add-on cards or not.)
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You have given me many things to think about and try Gorgonops. Thank you.
What I was thinking about, but did not clearly say, was that I wondered if a Apple branded SATA CD/DVD burner optical drive was around that would drop into my B&W, plug into my SATA card and work? Are you saying that even if it were a Apple branded SATA optical drive, the PCI SATA card would probably not support it?
Thanks
mraroid
Yes. The Apple branding isn't the important part here. At all. It would behave just like the one you already tried, technically bootable but the code which drives the "C held down" function has no idea to look for it where it is.
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Why? Because it cuts my time down more then half.
I installed OS9 over 10 times when I was rebuilding the B&W. The stock CD optical drive took 21 minutes to install it. When I used the older CD/DVD apple drive I just bought, it took 9 minutes. And this older drive is quite a bit slower than the SATA windows drive I used to install Tiger. So this drive that cost me around $35 cut my time in half. In half! I would say that is a good investment of the $35.00 and a really good reason.
How often do you intend to be reinstalling the OS, exactly? Is this a daily thing? And it's impossible for you to look away while it's happening, you need to stare at the progress bar the whole time? I have a pretty decent job; not great, but decent, but I'm pretty sure my paycheck doesn't work out to my time being worth $35 for 12 minutes.
If it's this important to you just *try* the "hold down option" thing and see if the graphical boot selector works despite "C" not. This is a test you could have performed yourself by now based on the information people have wasted *their* time relaying to you. If it works you don't need the "C" thing to install from cold boots without needing to use the control panel, if it doesn't then *you* need to decide what is most important to you.
If it's this important to you just *try* the "hold down option" thing and see if the graphical boot selector works despite "C" not. This is a test you could have performed yourself by now based on the information people have wasted *their* time relaying to you. If it works you don't need the "C" thing to install from cold boots without needing to use the control panel, if it doesn't then *you* need to decide what is most important to you.
There was a multiple key startup option for booting from CD before the "C option" came into being. Look that up and see if it's more deeply embedded in the OS than the "C macro/replacement" for it in later Macs. Can't imagine either working off an optical or any other drive that's not directly on the system hardware buses checked at the beginning of the boot sequence though.
G's advice to use the C option with the slower drive and then walk away for a while seems the best option, but I don't time installs or boots, especially the latter. In the 8-bit day you'd start the cassette to boot and head to the fridge for a beer while waiting for the session to begin. The obsession with fast boot times is something beyond my ken.
G's advice to use the C option with the slower drive and then walk away for a while seems the best option, but I don't time installs or boots, especially the latter. In the 8-bit day you'd start the cassette to boot and head to the fridge for a beer while waiting for the session to begin. The obsession with fast boot times is something beyond my ken.
Not if you cut your teeth on FDD limited systems or, heaven forbid, their audio cassette loader forebears. Silly Floppy EMU spoiled whipper snappers! :lol:
That era in the early-mid 90's before CD-ROMs became universal but a large office suite or OS might come on 20+ floppy disks was probably the high point of progress bar agony. Installation could take hours *and* you had to babysit it. 
The obvious thing going unsaid here: I'm pretty sure that everyone here would have to admit if they thought their free time had any monetary value retro computing would probably not be their hobby of choice.
The obvious thing going unsaid here: I'm pretty sure that everyone here would have to admit if they thought their free time had any monetary value retro computing would probably not be their hobby of choice.
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