Combo Drive Problem Revisited

[Joe Sporleder]

Dear Fellow iBook Owners,

A while back I reported new DVD's having problems playing on my new 
combo drive 900mhz iBook. About 1/2 to 3/4 way through a normal movie 
the DVD playback would start stuttering and then stop playing all 
together. One thing I like to do with a CD burner is when I get new 
software, I like to make a backup of the original CD, put it way in a 
safe place, and work off the backup copy, so if the backup gets 
scratched or damaged, no big deal, I just make another backup off the 
original. I decided to test the burner in this combo drive, so I took 
my retail box of Jaguar and decided to make backups of its CDs. I did 
this by making a disk image with Apple's Disk Copy, then using Disk 
Copy to burn the backup CD. About 1/2 way through the process, the burn 
failed and a strange error was reported communicating with the combo 
drive, it even referenced the fact it was a SONY combo drive. I had a 
hunch from my observations that the failure occurred when my iBook is 
plugged into AC power. So, I disconnected the power adapter so I'd run 
off the battery, was able to play the DVD to the end that was giving me 
trouble, and the CD that I was burning, worked perfectly while I was 
running off of battery power. My conclusion, my particular combo drive 
is a bit sensitive when running off of A/C power. I'm talking to my 
local Apple dealer to see what would be involved in getting this combo 
drive swapped out under warranty.

Joe