Pismo DVD Drive Dead?

June 8, 2005 11:03 AM

I recently acquired a G3/Pismo via ebay and decided to upgrade the hard drive. Upon doing so, my dvd/cd drive no longer functions; Help me sort through my options!

I am a new mac "owner" but casual user; I am well versed in pc hardware and the like. The old hard drive didn't have any jumpers, so I assumed that master / slave is determined >somehow< by the machine / Os; The drive worked with both cd's and dvd's prior to the hd upgrade; The only drive that shows up in system profiler is the wd scorpio drive. "About this mac" 500 MHz PowerPC G3 512 Ram, Max OS 10.3.9; I'm curious if I some how damaged a ribbon, or something when replacing with the new hd; CD's and DVD's will spin up, but will not mount on the desktop; I've seen reports of the drives going bad, but it seems suspicious that the drive would quit working after installing the new hd. I've also seen vague accounts of soldering "things" to designate master / slave etc. Is there anything else I can do to trouble shoot or fix this problem? I've got external dvd drives, but that negates "portability." Also, suggestions / experiences with using a "cheap" alternative by replacing drive in caddy with pc / oem parts? Thanks in advance for you help and or suggestions!

posted by AllesKlar to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

The hard disk and DVD drive are on separate buses, so you shouldn't need to worry about jumpers.

Have you tried booting off the drive? That would tell you if it was a software problem. Though, if it isn't showing up in system profiler, it's very likely the data cable isn't plugged in properly. Perhaps you dislodged it during the upgrade?

OEM drives work fine, though you will have problems with the faceplate, and may not be able to boot off them.
posted by cillit bang at 11:14 AM on June 8, 2005

I've seen cases where a bad drive will take down the rest of the drives on the bus; not so much with devices that get their own busses, though, but it's possible. (aside from cillit bang's suggestion) does it work if you put the old hard drive in? what if you get a converter board and hook it to a regular desktop?
posted by mrg at 2:58 PM on June 8, 2005

Response by poster: I know this thread will die before I have the chance to try mrg's suggestions; However, I will when I get home; Thanks for the reference cillit bang; I'm looking at the block diagram and unfortunately, it doesn't looks as "pretty" once you take the keyboard off; I'm having a hard time identifying the i/o ata for the expansion bay, but I'm just reseating everything again, and will try putting the old hd back in. Cheers All
posted by AllesKlar at 3:03 PM on June 8, 2005

it could just be coincidence -- the lg-8080 drives in the pismo are notorious utter crap, not to mention the battery -- I had to replace both in mine.

I replaced my cd-drive with a nice slot-loading panasonic/matsushita one.
posted by dorian at 5:18 PM on June 8, 2005