[G4] Switching internal optical drive to external case

[Richard Klein]

I gave my little sister a 450MHz Gigabit Ethernet a while back.  It 
seemed fine when it was here, but it's been pretty flaky for her since 
she got it.  She's in Georgia and I'm in Massachusetts which makes it 
tough to fix anything for her.

The biggest problem is that it rarely recognizes any discs inserted into 
the optical drive.  It's a Pioneer DVR111 that I bought brand new and 
installed just before I sent the computer to her.

I saw this external case go on sale:
http://www.dealsonic.com/plpmsicousb2.html
I figure her disc problems are probably from a failing IDE controller on 
the motherboard, so maybe putting the drive in a firewire case will let 
her get some use out of it.  How will the G4 (running OS X Tiger) deal 
with having an external optical drive, but no internal optical drive? 
Has anyone tried this?

-- 
Thanks,
Rich