Well, at long last, the SuperDrive in the radiator, which I had been having endless problems with, finally ceased working altogether.

Just when I need it, of course.

So, I remember brother Rico saying internal superdrives for the G5 are cheap. I had no idea they were THIS cheap. Under $40. I'll let you know if it works. It was basically a choice between samsung and pioneer, and I picked samsung. Just because of the terrible logic that if something costs two dollars more, it must be two dollars better.

I think you'll have good luck with that. Hell, I bought an HP DVD burner for my G4 MDD and it worked fine.

This whole ordeal leaves me wondering why the Superdrive that came with this system was such a POS? It's a Sony, and I thought they were good.

Performance since day 1 was dicey at best. It seemed very unforgiving of slightly dirty media, unlike the drives in my PC, which seem to play and burn anything. I even considered cracking open the PC and seeing if I could put that DVD-R drive in the Mac.

Now, the Superdrive simply stopped burning. Nothing, nada. Doesn't do anything but eject brand new blank discs of any type. And if I use Toast, which used to work, now nothing ever passes verification.

The ComboDrive that came with by MDD is surely a POS. It reads but has trouble burning CD's. But the $45.00 HP DVD burner drive works fine. I just think this is one of those "moving parts" things. It's the thing that can most easily go T.U. and drives do. I have a drive in my PC at home I need to replace but I haven't because I really don't need to burn CD's or DVDs. But next time I see a steal on one, I might pick one up just for backup purposes.

You probably could put that DVD-R in the Mac. Wouldn't hurt to try.

I get some verification problem on my DVD burner, but as far as I can see, it burns everything. I'm obviously not going to go and try to open every document, but everything seems to be there. I'm not absolutely sure if the verification process itself isn't buggy. Who knows?

Did I mention that a friend of mine is going to be (hopefully) giving me a G4 MDD (the same type I have) for a song? He's upgrading and doesn't need his old one. I may use it for some useful purposes, but it will mostly be just a parts machine or a backup. If a drive goes bad, I can cannibalize. If a power supply goes out, I can cannibalize.

The only thing I can say is to make sure that it is an ATA drive. All new machines are using SATA. So there are Superdrives with SATA connections. But in general any DVD superdrive will work as long as it is an ATA connection.

Yeah Sony drives are POS's. Seriously. The second hand G5 I bought two years ago had a Sony drive I had to replace immediately.

I have always bought Pioneer.

I didn't specifically check to see if it was ATA, but the web site did say: "choose your Mac"... and I hit the late 2005 G5, and bought one of the ones that came up.

Oh damn you brother, I knew you were going to say Pioneer, haha. I almost got the pioneer for $2 cheaper, but then it started to dig on me why was the Samsung more?

So true, DVD-R Drives are really reasonable priced these days. I got a LG Drive a while ago, works great most of the time. Glad, you got the Problem solved.
I also have a pioneer in my old G4, but performance was so-so. This was very likely caused by extreme heat inside the machine. (my stupid fault... hehe)

I think I bought Pioneer in the past because Pioneer was the only one making Superdrives at the time.

The LG drives may have been repackaged Pioneers.

At any rate Samsung as a company is huge compared to Pioneer.

Weren't both of those companies famous for stereo speakers or sound systems back in the day?

I hope that drive comes soon by Fedex, I really need it now. Of all the jobs I get after having no work for forever, the one job comes along where I have to burn media... and that's exactly the time the Superdrive picks to go south. It's my rotten luck again.

Pioneer still does stereos.

Does the drive in the PC burn DVD's? Can the job fit onto a CD? Possibly in a pinch could you put the job on several CD's if it is to large for one CD?

If the drive in the PC is a DVD burner it should easily move into the Radiator. You just have to pull the drive plate off the front of the drive. You will have to do that with the new drive as well. The drive tray should have nothing attacked to the front of it. The plate should come off pretty easily. If you don't take it off it will not open through the slot in the G5.

OK, the samsung arrived. Wasn't the easiest installation, mainly because the little mounting feet on the Sony had built in spacers, to raise up the face of the unit. The samsung is taller, and when I put the mounting feet on it, and slid them home, the tray impacted the top of the drive door and wouldn't come out. So off came the stupid feet, on went just some regular hard drive screws, not screwed in all the way... they don't really click in like the feet, but at least now the drive is lined up with the G5's drive door. Seems to work fine. Plays, burns. I wouldn't call it blazingly fast, but it's certainly quieter than the Sony, which was constantly cycling and grinding and struggling.

Oh, I did put that shielding on the front of the new drive. It fit on there like it was made for it. It doesn't seem to interfere with the drive tray, what did that was the FEET. The drive was too HIGH, it wasn't that the shielding plate was getting in the way of anything. The tray was hitting the top edge of the opening. And so I had to drop it down about 1/8th of an inch.

The PC's got a burner, as well as a plain CD drive. Never any problems with that. I had to use it while waiting for the new Superdrive.

Happy burning.

I have been burning like a maniac. Whereas before I'd lose 30% of my media, because of the unreliable Sony... now it's very rare to have a disc fail verification.

I've also been playing around with LightScribe discs... which are pretty much the coolest thing in the world. Have you heard of these? With some freeware, and a certain specially coated media, you can use the laser in the burner to ETCH the label side of the disc, with your own custom designed label. You can use any image or font. You can do crap like this or this.Or, you can go less-is-more and just etch the disk contents in nice readable type, with your logo or whatever. It takes a while, but it's sweet.

One thing I wish I knew how to do was add custom icons to PC files that I'm going to burn on custom hybrid CD-ROMs. Not just the CD icon (I see some instructions for how to do that online). But suppose I want to change a file or application icon? Seems so simple on the Mac. So impossible on the PC.

I think one of the drives I have is a lightscribe. Yeah, the one in my office PC. But I've never used that function. But, indeed, theoretically it sounds very cool. That puzzle example was pretty cool.

I have no idea how to change the icons on these things. WWRD?