Don't really know if I put this in the wrong forum but let me know if I did. My G3 B&W Power Mac has a CD-Rom/DVD-Rom drive in it and I was wondering if anyone knew of a super drive.. or any drive for that matter that has the DVD-RW capability under OS 9? Having a hard time because there were many old drives out there that have this capability for OS 9 but are never announced as compatible drives. I would rather not have to use OS X but I will if need be on the same machine, I just hate the restarts all of the time. I ask the question here because every time I post in an Apple Forum the OS X groupies pounce on the post and just say upgrade. Even a nice CD-RW drive would be ok.. I just need a direction here USB.. internal.... SCSI.. no problem. Any Ideas? Thanks for any input:)
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2010, September 22 - 1:45pm
#1
I Need A Good Drive..
Comments
2010, September 22 - 4:53pm
#2
If you're going to use Toast v5 (and the latest version for OS9 is v5.1.2), then suprisingly lots of drives are suitable. I pulled an Optiarc 7170A (Sony / NEC brand) out of my 2008 Mac Pro and it works perfectly under Toast in OS9. Forget it in any of the iApps (ie. iTunes) in anyhting less than OSX 10.4.6.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ may be good place to start, but you may struggle with finding current drives compatible with OS9. General concensus there is that anyhting by Pioneer, works.
2010, September 23 - 10:47am
#3
I put an old Sony DVD-RW in my eMac (OSX 10.5.
and it shows up as a Pioneer drive, fully Apple supported?!
2010, September 23 - 1:40pm
#4
@hiteckredneck129:
I was wondering if anyone knew of a super drive.. or any drive for that matter that has the DVD-RW capability under OS 9? Having a hard time because there were many old drives out there that have this capability for OS 9 but are never announced as compatible drives...
This is from my G4 DP 533's (Mac OS 9.2.2) "Apple System Profiler" which reports:
- Internal ATA 0
- ID = 0
- DVD-R/CD-RW
- Driver version: 1.4.7
- Mac OS partitions: 0
- Removable media: Yes
- Vendor: PIONEER
- Revision number: 1.17
- Product ID: DVD-RW DVR-110D
- Apple disc burning: Supported
And this is from a bog standard Pioneer OEM CD/DVD/RW that I picked up from a computer swap meet - No Apple ROMs or drivers required.
I gave an earlier version of the "D" series to my dad-in-law, it was as just as acceptable to his Mac but he hardly (if ever) uses it 
I purchased a newer Pioneer "117D" model and fitted it into my QuickSilver Mac... A.S.P. reports on that model as; "Apple disc burning" is not supported. - It doesn't seem to bother "Toast" tho'.
Still, I worry about finding replacements for these now, because (P)ATA hardware is becoming RARE to find. Its like PATA has become the new NUBUS.
Good luck in finding something suitable for your needs. It will only become more difficult as time flies by.
I'm still trying to locate a NUBUS graphics card for my Centris 660AV that will give me (hopefully) more than 1 MB of VRAM! So yes, I think I can feel your pain 
2010, September 28 - 11:04am
#5
Mike Garden,
It is hard finding hardware anymore, one thing I can tell you about the newer Pioneer's is that they aren't made by Pioneer anymore. Pioneer has outsourced their production to some other company in China. Also if you go to buy one (pioneer) on the internet from a Mac specialty make sure you contact the site about the mfr. date on the drive. Normally anything made after 2003 won't help you. Also you can log on the the wayback machine and check out what LACIE and Sony and even Iomega had to offer at the time (1996-Present). I use that all the time for that, It the coolest thing. I found a 52x52 CDRW drive on ebay cheap so I scoffed that up because if was FireWire and fully supported in OS 9.1. I have always found LACIE drives the most compatible all around. BTW I may have that very Centris lying around somewhere collecting dust, let me see if I can find it and give you a name of the mfr. off of the card, maybe that will help you out.
2010, September 28 - 11:36am
#6
@hiteckredneck129:
Thanks for the tips and info. Plus for checking out the Centris - I can live and hope yet 
2010, September 28 - 11:46am
#7
And thanks for the info about Pioneer's outsourcing. I've only ever bought Pioneer DVD drives for my PC. And that's three in 11 years: my first DVD-ROM, my first DVD-RW and my first dual-layer DVD-RW. All still working fine.
2010, September 29 - 7:07am
#8
@Mike Garden
Mike the card is made by a company called MassBit FastView 1MB MFR# 1098862541-36 Made in USA. The board is a reddish color. Hope that helps
2010, September 29 - 10:54am
#9
@hiteckredneck129:
MassBit FastView 1MB MFR# 1098862541-36
Thanks for checking that. Have to admit that I've never heard of this card or MassBit until now.
The card I'm wanting to fall over (about the only way I'm going to find it I think), is a "Formac ProLegend GA". Its a 3 MB card from 1996, perhaps the last Mac (NuBus) graphics cards produced, when all production line desktop Macs of the period with expansion slots, had gone PCI
No rush tho in finding it tho' - the old Centris is OK playing games like Myst, which looks great on such low rez displays
2010, September 29 - 7:31pm
#10
Yeah, I'll take a Nubus card myself for the 7100... So I'll be on the lookout for you Mike.
I was never interested in expanding back then because everything was so expensive.
I don't know whether to feel "special" or "cursed" by being the proud owner of NuBus expansion slots. According to Mactracker just the 6100, 7100, and 8100 models were NuBus.
[Edit] Too bad we weren't looking for the card back in July, 2003:
2010, September 30 - 7:05pm
#11
Hi guys,
I have some Nubus video cards if you are interested. If you have a PM 6100, then the PDs cards may even be a better bet. I have to go look to see exactly what I have and what I need. I may also have some SIMMs (from a 7100) if you like.