3rd Party DVDRW support for OS X

[tlarkin]

Hey everyone,

If any of you have read any of my past posts reguarding 3rd party DVDRW drives, you will know I have had issues with them. Mainly getting the internal 3rd party ones to work with all the iapps. I have tried hacked drivers and such and they do work, but ultimately they do not work perfectly.

Well, I have yet another client that wants to upgrade her quick silver G4 from a CDRW to an DVDRW. Now, these drives are getting cheaper and cheaper so buying one from apple, well just doesn't make any sense. The cheapest price I could get on a 4x DVDRW drive from apple was about 250, which isn't bad but by no means the best deal.

I came across these hacks in another thread on this site, located here (http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=15284&page=2&pp=20&highlight=external) .

How many of you have tried these hacks, and how well do you think they work? Cost is always a factor with almost all my clients. It seems they work with external drives as well. If this stuff really does work, then I could get my client a drive for under $100.00.

However, I have had issues with these hacks and non apple drives in the past. I have got them to work, but not work perfectly. Apple claims that its because they do not have the apple firmware on the drive.

Any experiences with these hacks?

Thanks in advance for any input,
Tom

[saint.duo]

I don't have any experience with with hacked drivers and such, but the LaCie drive may interest you.

http://lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10093

I have a non-hacked Pioneer DVR-106D in my AGP G4, but its only working great again at 10.3.4. 10.3-10.3.3 either would kernel panic the machine with ioata or refuse to eject media if I let media spin down in the drive.

I've used it for iTunes, finally burned some DVDs with iDVD, use toast quite a bit, and occasionally use finder burning.

[blubbernaut]

I have a Pioneer 106 sitting in a generic brand USB/Firewire 400 combo enclosure and it worked perfectly from the get go. Two things to check when installing it, if things are acting funny with the jumper set to Cable Select, then try it on Master instead (that's what mines on). To get it to work with iDVD, google for two little files called Hurz and Pfurz which sit in your Home folder and let iDVD burn to an external DVDR/RW. All other iApps have worked flawlessy for me.

Check xlr8yourmac.com for compatibility charts on all drives vs. all Mac models...extremely comprehensive, don't buy anything without checking here first.

[saint.duo]

I forgot to mention that mine is internal.

[tlarkin]

I put a few 106's in some G4's last year. They do work, but they don't always work perfect. I used the hacks and the hacked drivers and got it to work w/ iDVD, but it would not work perfect. Then once an update for the OS comes out it would sometimes render the 3rd party drive useless, or less functional. Apple actually uses that exact drive in their machines (G4 and G5s) stock. However, apple slaps their firmware on the drive, which none of the retail ones have. Now, If I could flash the firmware on the DVDRW drive itself it would probably work just like an apple drive.

I think I am going to get my client into a pioneer 106 (which retails for around $100.00 now) and slap it in her QS G4. She is running 10.2.8 and I know that it has native support in the OS for that drive (because apple was shipping G4's with that drive in it when 10.2.8 was out). I will try the hacked drivers if some issues occur, which I know they probably will once an update for the OS or an iapp comes out that makes the 3rd party drive less compatable.

Also, every drive I have put in has also been internal.

Thanks for your guys input.