[C4U]

Are the Optical drives on these emac's special or can we replace with standard CD-ROM drives? Because I have several PC machines with standard CD-ROM that I could use as replacement parts......

I have several G4's with 1.25ghz and 1.0ghz emac's that the drives are toast. The machines run well but have 10.1 on them and want to reload with 10.4 but can do it without the CD reader functioning. Since the load requires the use of 13-14 discs to complete the load.

Any sug. would be great....

C4U

[AKcrab]

They are standard drives.

[amazing]

If you've got something on hand that you can put in, great. Otherwise, I'd suggest getting a case for $45 from newegg.com (firewire/usb) and a drive for $30. You'll be able to use the external drive with any Mac, and it'll be way faster than anything else.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827129024
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817146602

[idykenano]

I second the external drive option if you don't need a drive in every machine. The reason I suggest this is that getting to the optical drive in eMacs can be a pain in the tuchkus. A royal pain. Exposing CRT's can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, and the sheer number of screws is similar to those in a hard drive replacement for an iBook G4.
But hey, if you're installing the optical drives, it gets easier every time and regular drives fit right in.

[C4U]

Well thanks for the information, I just wanted to make sure that the CD-ROM drives were not apple/mac special. I kinda figured that they were standard but didn't want to tear the machine down and find that the drives replacements will not work.

Yes, I can see that pulling the emac down to get to the CD-ROM cage is a bit of a hassle and thanks for the heads up on this.

Thx, C4U