Some mac advice please..

Lol

Hi y'all,
I need a dvdrw, mac compatible. I want to copy a dvd and I have a G4 which does not (as I understand it!) have this function. (Am I correct?) Which dvdrw do/would people recommend? Thanks in advance..

chaddy7604

Lol wrote: »

Hi y'all,
I need a dvdrw, mac compatible. I want to copy a dvd and I have a G4 which does not (as I understand it!) have this function. (Am I correct?) Which dvdrw do/would people recommend? Thanks in advance..

You really need to provide a little more information than just stating that you have a G4 mac, what mac do you actually have? what operating system version are you running on Mac OS X what? (See About This Mac)

To find out if your G4 mac is capable of burning to dvd you need to click on the little blue Apple icon top left of your screen. Then select "About This Mac", when the new window opens on your desktop click on the "More Info" button, this opens another window. On the left side select Hardware, then select Disc Burning you will now be given the information about your disc drive bay, you should see something like this (This is the setup I have) this will give you what your drive is capable of doing to disc media, the red text is what should be of interest to you

MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-857:

Firmware Revision: HAEA
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media: No


If your machine doesn't support dvdrw then you will need some form of external burner but until you provide more system information then the help you get on the forum may be a little limited, hopes this helps in some way

Regards Chaddy

isofa

Unless you have a very late G4 with a "SuperDrive" you won't have a DVD burner, most came with "Combo Drives" (which are CD-RW only).

Use the info from Chaddy to check.

There are many DVD-RW drives you could add to the system. Any USB/Firewire models will work, check your G4 has Firewire, very early models didn't.

Popular brands of external DVD writers would be LaCie and Iomega, but there are many others.

If you are technical person, you could swap out the internal CD-RW drive for new DVD writer (you have to open the case and get familiar with the inside and a screwdriver!). You'd need a Pioneer 111d or 112d DVD-RW drive, only use Pioneer as they match the Apple spec and allow direct burning with the system, other brands will not be recognised internally by the operating system.

These updates have been covered in detail on the MacUser hardware Forums: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/macuser/phpbb/index.php

Hope that helps.

Lol

Sorry, yeah I did look at the system info and then wasn't sure what of it you'd need to help me.
Under hardware I don't have the option to go into disk burning for info, but I did find under ATA next to disk burning it says Apple supported/shipped and next to Drive type: CD-RW DVD-ROM. Do you need any further info then that or does that confirm, like isofa says, it will need one.

Isofa, if I can put it in myself would I still need something like Toast too?
(No, apologies, am not all that technical, but eager enough to learn from those that do know, like yourselves!)

isofa

That means you just have a ComboDrive, which is a CDRW, so you'll definitely need a DVD writer to burn DVDs. Most external ones will come with additional software such as Toast.

Some burning tasks you can do via the system, but if you want more advanced features you may need Toast, also there are some good free utilities, such as Disc Burner: http://www.centromedia.com/en/products/discburner/index.html and many others too!

chaddy7604

Lol

What model of mac have you got? are you talking about a Power Mac G4

G4 covers a whole family of mac's from iBook, PowerBook, Mac mini, iMac etc

ikaruga

Burn for OS X is an excellent free burner.

http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/

Lol

I have a 1.25 ghz G4 powermac dual processor. Mac OS X version 10.3.9. I checked out the links suggested, if I do fit it myself with one of those pioneer models, would I be replacing it with the current drive, or do I have a spare drive in the machine...or am I just confusing myself. Is it simple to fit??
Thanks so much for the help already given.

isofa

You can do either, providing you have a spare bay and spare opening flap at the front (some have a Zip drive in the other bay, so in that case, you'll just have to replace the CDRW)

If you've messed around inside PCs/Macs before it's quite straightforward, but if you haven't you might find it tricky. Essentially open the case (which couldn't be easier, they are so well designed), remove a few screws, two cables, slot the old drive out and then reverse the process to install the new one.

There is a video guide at:

http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.cfm?page=Video/optical/g4qsopt/med.html

PS Burn mentioned by ikaruga above is excellent, it's the one I was trying to think of earlier, and it's free of couse!

craig777

Your easiest option will be to just get an external firewire drive, job done.

Lol

That's so much help guys, thanks loads x