[G4] DVD Rom/Ram in a G4 450mhz?

[Fabian Fang]

On Feb 19, 2006, at 1:35 PM, Thomas J. Fobia wrote:

>    I have a nephew who bought a G4 (450mhz) off ebay recently. It  
> has a DVD Ram or Rom drive (optical) and he wants to upgrade the  
> OSX (currently 10.1.5) to 10.4! If he purchase this (PANTHER) from  
> apple or another source, will he be able to install from this type  
> of optical drive? He cant play a normal (movie) dvd so I suspect he  
> will have problem with installation since the 10.4 I recently  
> bought comes on a DVD disk. Anyone out there fimiliar with this  
> type (dvd Rom/Ram) of drive? Could he install a Pioneer 109 or 110  
> without making things worse?

With all due respect your inquiry is confusing because it includes  
questionable statements.  First of all, your nephew should ascertain  
whether his newly acquired G4 has a DVD-RAM drive or a DVD-ROM drive,  
which are different.  This information is readily available in the  
System Profiler.  Both types of optical drives read CD-ROM and DVD- 
ROM discs, but only the DVD-RAM drive reads from and writes to DVD- 
RAM media.

I have a Server G4/500 Sawtooth that originally came with a DVD-RAM  
drive, which worked flawlessly for several years until I replaced it  
with a SuperDrive not too long ago.  I put the DVD-RAM drive in an  
external FireWire enclosure, and it still works well.  I am not sure  
why you wrote "He cant play a normal (movie) dvd .... " because I  
have had no problem playing DVD movies with my DVD-RAM drive.  If the  
optical drive in your nephew's G4, whether a DVD-RAM drive or a DVD- 
ROM drive, is working properly, he should be able to install Mac OS  
either from a Panther CD or a Tiger DVD.  I have done both.

Your nephew can certainly replace the existing optical drive with a  
Pioneer drive, as I have done, but not because he has to do it in  
order to install OS X or play DVD movies.

Fabian