[bighead]

I bought a 10 pack of DVD-RAM discs at Costco a week or two ago (great deal, $18 for the pack). However, I found out that my UJ-835 in my PowerBook doesn't write to DVD-RAM like it should. So, rather than returning the discs as Costco would likely do without question, I bought a DVD drive for my desktop that, in addition to the standard stuff, also appears to write to DVD-RAM. The drive is here:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...009&depa=0

What I'm inquiring about is the success in getting drives such as this working in Power Macs with DVD-RAM and what kind of performance I should expect when using such a drive. I realize that this is not a Power Mac specific topic per se, but since I could not find any information about this drive in the XLR8yourMac database, I thought I would throw it out here and try to get some feedback.

Also, as a side note, it appears that optical drives work jumpered as either M/S or CS in MDD G4 towers. The manual says that optical drives, like hard disks should be jumpered as CS. I'm assuming that this is what should be done, but as anyone had any positive or negative experiences otherwise?

[bighead]

It doesn't look like this drive is going to work for DVD-RAM. I'm using OS X Server 10.3.9 on an MDD 2003 tower. Any advice? PatchBurn 3.1 is getting everything BUT DVD-RAM to work.

[bighead]

I take that back. It just took some patience and waiting. It looks like this Panasonic drive, plus PatchBurn 3.1 does let you use DVD-RAM on OS X. It's writing at about 13 minutes per GB, not sure what speed that is. The discs are rated at 2x-3x, so it's likely one of those.

I'm surprised that this versatile format isn't more popular. It's slower than write-once and even newer ±RW discs, but not having to erase the disc and reburn files (and not use filesystem hacks like on Windows) is so cool!

[Eug Wanker]

PatchBurn should not be necessary for DVD-RAM support. It's built into OS X. PatchBurn gets stuff like iDVD and iTunes to recognize the drive, but the drive should still work for DVD-RAM and Toast, without PatchBurn.

[bighead]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

PatchBurn should not be necessary for DVD-RAM support. It's built into OS X. PatchBurn gets stuff like iDVD and iTunes to recognize the drive, but the drive should still work for DVD-RAM and Toast, without PatchBurn.

I knew PatchBurn wasn't for DVD-RAM support specifically, but I figured that the drive wouldn't be able to erase DVD-RAM discs in Disk Utility without it.

DVD-RAM is such a little-covered topic both here and on the XLRyourMac database, I wanted to be as detailed as possible in case there are those would like to try the format out, even though it is one of those buck-toothed, redheaded stepchildren of optical standards. Even the discs have freckles.