Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Zoom · Jun 29, 2004, 09:25 AM

What's the current state of affairs with PowerMacs and support for new internal DVDR drives? I have a Sawtooth G4 and went through all sorts of hell trying to get a Pioneer 105 to work in it - I eventually had to pull it out and put it in an external case. I'm looking to upgrade to one of the new G5s and I want to install a dual-layer DVD-R drive internally.

These dual layer burners are popping up everywhere, and they're really not that expensive. I wish Apple was equipping them as standard equipment, or at least offering them as a BTO option.

Luca Rescigno · Jun 29, 2004, 09:36 AM

I bought a Pioneer DVR-107D from NewEgg for about $120 a couple months ago. Now they're even cheaper ($80-$90), and there will probably be a Pioneer dual layer version coming out soon. NEC sells a dual layer DVD burner for just $85, but as far as I know, it's not really OS X compatible. Maybe there's a hack you can do to get it working.

The easiest thing would be to just buy a Pioneer drive, since that's the primary brand Apple supplies with their desktops. As far as I know, all Pioneer DVD burners are supported in OS X.

Zoom · Jun 29, 2004, 03:25 PM

Defined "supported". With my G4, I got kernel panics if I left a disk in the tray and the G4 went to sleep. I couldn't get iDVD to work with it, either. This really pissed me off. In the external case, I can play movies and burn using Toast. I want full support from all the iApps and the OS this time around.

Luca Rescigno · Jun 30, 2004, 08:33 AM

Sounds like a malfunction in the hardware, not a lack of driver support. By supported, I mean that there are drivers that make it show up in Apple System Profiler as "Apple Supported/Shipped" or something along those lines. When I installed my DVR-107, there was zero setup. It just worked the moment I installed it. If you install an unsupported drive, it doesn't cause kernel panics. It just doesn't work with Finder burning, iTunes, etc. So I think you just got a bad drive.

Zoom · Jun 30, 2004, 09:05 AM

Actually, others had these issues with Pioneer drives, according to xlr8yourmac. The device works fine outside my Mac, just not inside. It's some sort of incompatibility. I originally bought the Pioneer 105 because it was the same drive Apple used and most people said it worked fine. Once I did all the work to install it and started having these nasty problems, I dug into the stuff on xlr8yourmac and found that other people has seen this, too. Their solutions didn't work for me so I gave up and pulled it back out.

I don't want to go through that again, but I want to choose my DVD-R drive and I want it internal. Before I go through the hassle and expense, I'd like to feel more comfortable that it will really work this time.

What are the downsides to an external drive? Does iDVD work with external drives now? That's my fall-back.

Luca Rescigno · Jun 30, 2004, 09:17 AM

External drives aren't nearly as convenient. The functionality should be the same in basically every case, it's just a matter of taking extra steps in some cases. For example, if you install OS X from an external drive and your internal drive is a non-DVD drive, you won't have DVD Player.app installed. You'll have to dig around in the package and get it yourself. And there is a work around to allow the use of iDVD with external drives now, but I don't know how to use it. I don't use iDVD.

Anyway, there were some fairly nasty problems with early Pioneer DVD burners. They should all be worked out now. Seriously, a huge number of people have bought and installed DVR-107D drives without any problems at all (including two members of my family).

Zoom · Jun 30, 2004, 09:39 AM

Excellent, that's good to know. Thanks.