[Swancoat]

Hi guys, I need some help with my Que! Firewire CD Burner.

It's been working fine for months, no problems. Recently I switched over to OS X, and because CD burning hasn't been enabled, I haven't burned any CD's for about a month. Now that CD burning is enabled, I decided to start to catch up and burn some CDs. iTunes says, "Burner or Software not found"

I checked Apple System Profile, and on the Firewire bus, it says that there are no devices available. (Yes the CD burner is plugged in, and turned on).

I switched to OS 9.1, and found the same results. The computer just does not see the burner. In vain, I downloaded Apple's G4 firmware update because it said something about fixing firewire, but that didn't help either.

I've run out of ideas, and would appreciate any help that you guys could give me.

Thanks,

Jeremy

[lucylawless]

1. What are your specs? What speed burner? What software and hardware? Do you know the drive's internal mechanism? (my 4x4x24 is Mitsumi; many newer drives from QPS are Plextor, I think)

2. What have you tried? Extensions troubleshooting? Any other firewire devices or drivers? When you installed X, did you upgrade to 9.1 at the same time? (because 9.1 often installs discburner extensions, which often interfere with Toast)

3. Did you search this forum? QPS drives have been the subject of many problems 'round here in the last few months (hell, they've always had problems). Perhaps your situation has arisen before.

the only thing that comes to mind, is that on my burner (Que!Fire 4x4x24 Mitsumi), if I haven't used it for a while (it's always on and plugged in, just not used), it refuses to be recognized by the computer (Pismo Powerbook 400MHz). Clean system install does nothing, but (so far) turning off the computer for about 3 hours has fixed it. Strangely enough, this first happened the day before I bought OS X (I never used X before I bought it).

I hope this helps

PS. If anyone can give me a reason why giving my computer a timeout fixes this problem, I'm all ears. (I can leave the drive on and this still works. I have a firewire hard drive with no such problem)

[Adham]

Ditto re: checking the actual make of the drive in the QPS case. I have one of their 12x10x32 drives, and found out it has one of the dreaded TEAC drives in it. Couldn't burn anything with iTunes until I found the new Authoring Support files via Software Update control panel. Good luck!

[Swancoat]

1. Specs: G4 450 MP 128MB RAM, Que! 8x4x32 FireWire Drive. The drive has a plextor mechanism.

2. Extensions/troubleshooting: Apple System Profiler does not recognize the drive in either 9.0.4, 9.1, or 10.0.3 so I immediately ruled out any kind of extension problem. I have no other firewire devices. I did upgrade to 9.1 before I installed X, but I did a clean install of 9.0.4 on a separate partition, and even booted from that, Apple System Profiler still cannot see the drive.

3. I did not search this forum (but I will now - thanks ).

re: shutting down the computer: My computer is shut down nightly, and it doesn't help.

Thanks for your input. I still welcome any solution anyone may have.

Jeremy

[lucylawless]

yeah, if you do have an extension or driver conflict, the system profiler will not see the drive.

go to the extensions manager and where it says 'Selected Set: ' at the top, choose Mac OS 9.0.4 Base

then go and find all the extensions that start with 'Toast' and turn them on (it will ask you if you want to duplicate the set, so do it). Also make sure that 'authoring support' and 'firewire authoring support' are both either absent or disabled.

Then restart. If the drive is now recognized, your problem was a software conflict. Otherwise, your toast drivers may be corrupted, or it may be a hardware problem. If you have another firewire computer around, you might want to test the drive on the other computer, and also test your Mac's firewire ports with Firewire Target Disk Mode


<edit: oh, duh, I now see what you're saying about the system profiler in 10.0.3. Anyway, I still don't trust it, because I use a firewire hard drive in X all the time, but the system profiler shows no trace of it>

[This message has been edited by lucylawless (edited 05-27-2001).]

[bugs]

Originally posted by lucylawless:
PS. If anyone can give me a reason why giving my computer a timeout fixes this problem, I'm all ears. (I can leave the drive on and this still works. I have a firewire hard drive with no such problem)

I posted a similar comment a few days ago (still unsolved). Surely someone has some tech insight on this timeout thing.

from 5/26/01:
I hope someone can help with this frustrating puzzle.
�
This drive has burned over a hundred flawless disks but in recent months it crashes everything badly upon attempting to verify a disk. After the crash, the computer restarts & recovers, but not the drive. It can't read or write and any attempt will cause another system crash. But if I unplug it for several days, it usually returns to normal.
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Well, you say, just don't verify disks and you won't have problems! But I had to try after upgrading to Toast 5, and it happened again. Toast has a preferred memory allocation of 33MB. I'm also using a 9600/350 with an Orange Firewire card. Also, this setup worked fine until recent months (perhaps the upgrade to OS9).

I have a suspicion it has something to do with OS 9 and 9.1. Also the 2MB buffer in the drive. Something scrambles that buffer and it takes several days powered down for the RAM to be erased/reset.

Please help if you can. I can find no other convenient way to verify these disks.

[marka]

I see this is an older thread but just in case you haven't also try these:

- power everything down and back up again.

- with the machine on power cycle the drive.

- check or switch your firewire cable

- make sure you aren't running iTunes Authoring extension. it conflicts with Toast's.