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PowerPC Mac Liberation Army

Problems booting B&W from DVD-RW/CDRW

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I'm stumped. I'm working on a B&W. First I popped in a hard drive that I'd used in other macs before which had 10.3 loaded. Finder was crashing and restarting itself constantly. Ok I thought, maybe the install is bad or the drive is bad (it is a WD Rolling Eyes ).

So I pull out my discs and since I can't seem to locate 10.3 disk 1 I go with 10.2. Put in the disc and nothing shows up on the desktop. Plus Finder dies again. Go to ASP and the drive is there and listed as fully supported for burning.

I shut down and try to boot of the CD. It boots from the hard drive. I try again, same thing. I disconnect the hard drive and try to force it to boot from the only system its got - in the optical drive. I get the flashing "no system" folder.

The optical drive is a apple-branded DVR-104PB. The B&W is a rev2. I disconnect the ZIP drive. No luck. I take the jumper off the drive which had it set to master (since no jumper also sets master). Still nothing. I try a DVR-103PB. Same problems.

Finally I pull a plain old Apple DVD-ROM out of my Beige and it works fine.

What in the world am I doing wrong??? I think the DVR-104PB works though I found it in a parts pile so it could have a problem I forgot about. But I know the DVR-103PB works. Am I missing some key point about B&Ws and bootable optical drives?

Tom Mad
You mentioned that the optical drive from the beige (if I interpret you correctly) works in the B&W, and that the DVR-104PB is 'seen' in ASP by the B&W. The latter presumably means that the DVR-104PB's ROM can be read by the B&W's system, even if no other data can.

Have you tried the converse? Is the DVR-104PB functional in the beige? Whether or no should clinch that the DVR-104PB has a clagged connector (or jumpering), that it is plain u/s internally, or that the support of that model is not present in the B&W, although this latter could be expected to be unlikely. If the DVR-104PB and DVR-103PB are essentially similar, how does the DVR-103PB fare in the beige?

de
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(60x) 13DT + 3PB + PTPro; (G3) 7DT/MT; (G4) 3T + PB. System 8.1 to OS 10.5.8