[roders]

The DVD-RW drive on this machine doesn't work .
I'm going to return this to apple at some point to get a replacement, but in the meantime I've installed an AOpen 52X32X52 CDRW This CDRW is not recognised by Mac OSX, it doesn't even show up in system profiler (nor does the ATA6 bus it's connected on)
EXCEPT when I change the drive from say Cable select to Master; but it appears only for the one boot, If I reboot the G5 the optical drive is gone again, and I have to change the master slave jumper on the rear of the CDRW again, sometimes this doesn't work and I have to unplug the ATA & CDRW power cable cable too, and sometimes nothing works, as is the case at present, the drive has dissapeared agian and I cannot get it back at (and it's a bugger to take out; I've sliced me finger open already).
Is there any way to get this burner up and running (just for reading CD's) as a temporary measure?

[Lateralus]

Try installing the hacked optical drive driver PatchBurn.

[roders]

No go, if the Drive doesn't show up in System profiler (which it won't now what ever I do) Patchburn can't do it's thing. CheckTHIS for another report of a mac user with the same problem with the same drive.
Has anyone come across a problem similar to this before with an an AOpen CDRW or any brand of optical drive for that matter, that they managed to resolve?

[Groovy]

Originally posted by roders:
The DVD-RW drive on this machine doesn't work .
I'm going to return this to apple at some point to get a replacement, but in the meantime I've installed an AOpen 52X32X52 CDRW This CDRW is not recognised by Mac OSX, it doesn't even show up in system profiler (nor does the ATA6 bus it's connected on)
EXCEPT when I change the drive from say Cable select to Master; but it appears only for the one boot, If I reboot the G5 the optical drive is gone again, and I have to change the master slave jumper on the rear of the CDRW again, sometimes this doesn't work and I have to unplug the ATA & CDRW power cable cable too, and sometimes nothing works, as is the case at present, the drive has dissapeared agian and I cannot get it back at (and it's a bugger to take out; I've sliced me finger open already).
Is there any way to get this burner up and running (just for reading CD's) as a temporary measure?

you have it set to master but is it connected to the master of the ribbon cable?
What happens when you set the drive to slave?

[roders]

There is only one ata connector on the ata ribbon cable for optical drives on the G5, I have tried Master and Cable select (which is suppossed to automaticaly select wether the drive should be master or slave depending on it's position on the ata cable) nothing is workinmg now, please read my post carefully.

[tooki]

That sounds like a hardware incompatibility, not a software problem. (Sorry PowerMacMan!)

I doubt there's anything you can do to make it work. Just swap in a different model -- and use xlr8yourmac.com's drive database to find a known-compatible model. And add a report on this drive, so others don't make have to re-discover the incompatibility. And then for yourself, consider just buying a DVD-RW drive as the replacement: they can be found for $50 now, after all!

tooki

P.S. Check the drive for bent pins, and if you have a spare ATA cable around, see if anything changes when you use a different ATA cable (to rule out a bad cable).

[CharlesS]

That drive sounds like it may just be damaged. This may not be a compatibility problem at all.

[Groovy]

Originally posted by roders:
There is only one ata connector on the ata ribbon cable for optical drives on the G5,

no you mean on YOUR G5. my ribbon cable has both master and slave. By adding an
extension you can add another HD. You can also replace apples cable or did that
not ever occur to you that it may be a bad cable?

I have tried Master and Cable select (which is suppossed to automaticaly select wether the drive should be master or slave depending on it's position on the ata cable) nothing is workinmg now,
[/B]

yes i know and why i said try slave.

Just because you THINK you have it set to master or cable select does not make it so because the DRIVE could be simply LABELED wrong or worse the jumper block could
have been installed incorrectly and i have seen both happen more than once.

heck i have even seen bad jumpers and had to pull one off another drive to test
because it turned out the drive was in NO mode per se' because of it.

please read my post carefully.
[/B]

please stop assuming and do some simple tests before going on to people
who are only trying to help you.

[roders]

Whatever, if you'd just checked the URL in my above post, you'd see it seems like it's the make of burner, My broken Pioneer DVD-R shows up fine, as does the 7 year old CDrom (the shame ) drive thats installed and working in my G5 at the moment.
Thanks 4 ur help anyhow.