[raymon]

Hello, this is my first posting here.

I've had my Digital Audio 933 MHz Mac G4 (1,025 MB ram) running Mac OS X 10.1.5 for three years now. Several weeks ago I started noticing that inserting a CD in the Superdrive led to the CD not mounting. When I try to boot the Install CD (pressing the C key while restarting) I get the spinning beach ball with the smiling face in a grey screen. Same problem with a DiskWarrior disk or any disk for that matter. I Restart to get the disk out.

1. Is it a bad superdrive?
2. Is it a corrupted DVD Player application. No CD mounts when inserted.
3. Is it a bad ram although I've had the same two sticks of ram, total 1,025 MB, since Day 1 three years ago?
What else?

I've thought about getting an appointment with a Genius at the local Apple Retail Store (that's what they're called). There is also a small one-man repair shop in town there for at least five years.

I have everything backed up in a bootable la Cie firewire external drive.
I've thought about starting in OS 9.2 (classic) and seeing if a CD mounts.
However, i decided to avail myself of the mac brains who might be logging in these forums.
I don't even know if I'm in the right forum.

Thanks in advance.
Raymon

P.S. I have another internal drive to install. I've ordered Retail versions of OS X 10.2.x and 10.3.x in case I decide to upgrade my 10.1.5 which I don't care to do since it's been working just fine. Of course, there are now quite a few things I can't do without being in at least 10.2: e.g. can't buy a 99 cent iTune, etc.

[MacGallant]

Originally Posted by raymon

Hello, this is my first posting here.

I've had my Digital Audio 933 MHz Mac G4 (1,025 MB ram) running Mac OS X 10.1.5 for three years now. Several weeks ago I started noticing that inserting a CD in the Superdrive led to the CD not mounting. When I try to boot the Install CD (pressing the C key while restarting) I get the spinning beach ball with the smiling face in a grey screen. Same problem with a DiskWarrior disk or any disk for that matter. I Restart to get the disk out.

1. Is it a bad superdrive?
2. Is it a corrupted DVD Player application. No CD mounts when inserted.
3. Is it a bad ram although I've had the same two sticks of ram, total 1,025 MB, since Day 1 three years ago?
What else?

I've thought about getting an appointment with a Genius at the local Apple Retail Store (that's what they're called). There is also a small one-man repair shop in town there for at least five years.

I have everything backed up in a bootable la Cie firewire external drive.
I've thought about starting in OS 9.2 (classic) and seeing if a CD mounts.
However, i decided to avail myself of the mac brains who might be logging in these forums.
I don't even know if I'm in the right forum.

Thanks in advance.
Raymon

P.S. I have another internal drive to install. I've ordered Retail versions of OS X 10.2.x and 10.3.x in case I decide to upgrade my 10.1.5 which I don't care to do since it's been working just fine. Of course, there are now quite a few things I can't do without being in at least 10.2: e.g. can't buy a 99 cent iTune, etc.

Sounds like a dying or dead optical drive. The same thing happened to me about 2 years ago, turned out that my combo drive died and I had it replace for free due to AppleCare warranty.

[raymon]

Thank you, MacGallant.

It probably is just a defective superdrive which my Apple System Profiler identifies as the above Pioneer DVR-104 DVR-RW. (My AppleCare policy expired last August.) I've googled the unit and found some priced at around $140. I'll probably go ahead and buy one sometime this week after sleeping on it. Sound good?

Are there any firmware or other issues I should be wary of?
Thanks.

[MacGallant]

Sorry for the long wait, I was taking my finals at my local university. Anyways, you don't have to buy the same model of superdrive dvd burner that came with you computer. Accelerate Your Mac website has a database of lists of different drives in terms of compatibilty with different versions of Mac OS and different Mac models.

here's the link: http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drived....drivedb.lasso

You don't have to pay $140 for a new superdrive when it can be had for about $54 here form a online Mac dealer OWC: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/optic...ives/powermac/

By the way remember to upgrade to at least Mac OSX 10.3 Panther for it has more drivers for different optical drive (i.e. cd burners, dvd drives, dvd superdrive burners, etc) than Mac OSX 10.1.

Hope everything works out.

[raymon]

Hello MacGallant and anonymous viewers of this topic.

MacGallant, thanks for your thoughts. I received good advice about trying out laser lens system cleaning in case the optics was dirty. The advice came from one of the Apple Discussions forums which until yesterday was not accessible to me. I had given up on it and just tried logging on just for kicks yesterday. Much to my surprise I was able to log in just fine.

The laser lens cleaner I used was the Radio Shack CD Laser Lens Cleaner. It did the trick and allowed me to mount my Mac OS X Install disk and run Disk Utility; my internal hard drive verified as OK. I might run my DiskWarrior disk sometime soon.

Regards.

Raymon