[palmberg]

I have a 500MHz Cube here with an unformatted HD. It will accept a Panther install CD, but it will not accept a Tiger install DVD. So I'm assuming there's a CDRW drive in there, but I want to make sure it's not actually a broken combo drive. Is there any way to access optical drive information via open firmware?

[P]

Sure. Just traverse the Device tree and check the IDE devices and check the NAME tag on them. This document will tel you all you need to know:

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1062.html

No, it's not simple. In fact, it's really hard, though doable. If you want to try, you have commands in that file, even though the examples are horribly out of date. I really think that there are easier ways, though. For instance, you could use the Panther install DVD to get to Disk Utility - it's in the Apple menu, I think. From there, you should be able to see your drive. Or you could use a Hardware analysis disc if you have one, like the one included with recent Macs or with Applecare.

[palmberg]

Great suggestions. Thank you.

My trouble is that I'm preparing this Cube for sale, and I'd like to include a copy of Tiger with it. But I only have a Tiger DVD. If this *is* a CDRW drive, it won't do me any good to send along an install DVD with the Cube. I could install Tiger on it using my external DVDRW drive, but I'd rather not hassle with setting up a dummy user account that the new owner will just have to write over. Is there a way around that?

[Big Mac]

Why not just Erase and Install and shut down afterward?