[X4U] DVD Burner

[Eddie Hargreaves]

On 11/1/04 8:36 AM, Keith Whaley <keith_w at dslextreme.com> wrote:

> Stroller wrote:
> 
>> On Nov 1, 2004, at 1:28 am, Mike Strawn wrote:
>> 
>>> I recently purchased a Pioneer DVD-R 105 drive from Other World
>>> Computing to burn DVD¹s on my G3. My problem is that I¹ve wasted 20
>>> disks with only 2 successful burns. The drive appears to function
>>> properly, but at various points in the process I get a ³Sense key
>>> error² and the burn fails. I¹m running Panther (10.3.5) using
>>> XpostFacto on a G3 that has a G4 500 Mhz ZIF chip...
> 
>> I'd want to try the drive in another machine if I were you.
>> 
>> My initial reaction was that if you've tried the drive with different
>> software & different media then you must've received a duff drive, but
>> then I noticed your comments about XpostFacto. Since this is an older
>> Mac it's quite conceivable that it's not capable of shoving data at the
>> drive fast enough,
> 
> What is it that does the "shoving?"

Um, the computer...

> You put the DVD disc in a reader/writer, and the drive does what it
> needs to read or write. Self-contained unit, no?

No, the drive needs to receive data from the computer fast enough. This is
why there's no such thing as a USB 1 DVD burner.

> How does any given CPU change any of that?
> Does his CPU's bus (any of them) speed enter into any of this?
> The Pioneer unit he's using accepts (?) data to support a sustained
> write speed of 11 MB/sec., which they says is "8X" for DVD.
> Where's the potential bottle neck?
> MUST it be presented at 11 MB/sec. in order to work? I thought that's
> the drive's business.
> 
> Just trying to understand why the CPU you use matters. I mean, even the
> G3 uses one of the later processors and is a capable machine.

The processor does matter. This is why Apple only ever shipped a DVD-burning
drive in G4 machines. Although Mike's G3 has been upgraded with a G4
processor, it's quite possible that the bus speed is holding things back. I
would simply chalk the whole thing up to the fact that he's running OS X on
unsupported hardware with an unsupported drive setup.

Eddie Hargreaves