[macmike42]

My dad has a beige G3 at home with a busted CD drive. The drive still works, but just barely. The drawer is busted so he has to manually pull it open and close it (which, to his credit, requires impeccible timing), and he can't put the bezel on it anymore because the drive has become contorted in its bay. (Mine has not done this because I never let my violent, short-tempered younger brother use my G3.)

I am going to pick him up a replacement as a last-minute stocking-stuffer, and was wondering if I could also give him an upgrade to a CD-RW at the same time. So, I was wondering if anyone has experience with IDE CD-RW drives on a beige G3? Will it work? What's the fastest speed I can use? Any brands that are known not to work? What brand(s) does Apple use? I would prefer not to buy a new IDE controller, but if needed, he still has 1 empty PCI slot. Thanks in advance.

[JBracy]

I've replaced the origional with a CD_RW. However when I did it 4x was the fastest around. Technically there's no reason that the fastest availiable won't work. I personally would recommend the Yamaha CRW-F1. I don't know if it is supported directly via the OS9 Disc Burner, but it is supported by both Disc Burner and iTunes in OSX 10.2.2 and above.

It comes with Roxio Toast Light 5 and a Plug-in for Toast that allows you to burn images onto the unused portion of a CD. Very cool, I just wish I had bought the Mac version so I could try it out, but I bought mine before it was availiable with Mac software. (Anyone with the Toast plugin, please contact me :-)

Good Luck,

Jason

[macmike42]

Thanks for the info, the CRW-F1 is exactly what I was looking at. This "image-etching" feature sounds too damn cool to imagine! If it comes with the Toast plugin, I'll be sure to hook you up.