Discs eject without reading and no external HD

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PowerBook G4 15" 1.5 GHz, eMac G4 .25 GHz
My wife has a PB G4 15". No matter what kind of disc is put in the drive, it gets spit out about 3 seconds later. Also, we have a 120 GB external HD that works just fine with our eMac, but no joy with the PB. Any ideas?

The PB is about 7 years old. Works great, other than the USB/CD/DVD thing.

I've tried system updates, creating a new admin account, nothing seems to fix it. Maybe the drive's just dead. But I don't understand why my external hard drive won't be recognized.
 
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It sounds like you need to clean the lens or replace the disc drive - if you opt for the latter option, I recommend MCE Tech or OWC. What filesystem does the external hard drive use and what version of Mac OS are you running on each computer?
 
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vader33
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It sounds like you need to clean the lens or replace the disc drive - if you opt for the latter option, I recommend MCE Tech or OWC. What filesystem does the external hard drive use and what version of Mac OS are you running on each computer?

The external is windows based, FAT32. We have 10.4.11 on both Macs. The only thing I can think of is the Powerbook is USB 1.0 and the hard drive is USB 2.0. But I don't think that makes a difference. We'll try cleaning out the lens on the disc drive, but the computer's 7 years old, so it might have just bit the dust.
 
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The only thing I can think of is the Powerbook is USB 1.0 and the hard drive is USB 2.0
It might just be taking a long time to mount, since USB 1.0 is really slow (1.5MB/s I believe) and Mac OS seems to like to mess around with your drive before mounting it.
 
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vader33
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PowerBook G4 15" 1.5 GHz, eMac G4 .25 GHz
If I opt for the external dvd/cd burner, does it have to be made specifically for a mac?
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
If the PB is this model

Apple PowerBook G4 1.0 15" (FW800 - Al) Specs (15-Inch FW800 - M8980LL/A) @ EveryMac.com

or any with Firewire, look for a Firewire external optical drive. PowerPC machines, which includes all G3, G4 and G5's will not boot from USB, even USB2.

Also an external Firewire hard drive will be bootable with an OS installed on it. Must be Apple Partition Map and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format however.

May well be simpler to install another internal optical drive?
 

bobtomay

,
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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Check that site harry gave you a link for, if that's not your particular model PowerBook. If your PowerBook is prior to Sep '03, it likely will not work with any of today's USB drives.

USB 2.0 ports are backwards compatible with devices that use earlier versions of USB so that your USB 1.1 mouse will work on a USB 2.0 port.
But USB 2.0 devices are 'typically' not backward compatible with earlier ports so a USB 2.0 drive will not work on a USB 1.1 port.
You may run into the same issue trying to find an optical drive that will work under USB 1.1.

As harry stated check into a FW drive - all PB G4's had at least FW400 and many FW 800.
 
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vader33
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Your Mac's Specs
PowerBook G4 15" 1.5 GHz, eMac G4 .25 GHz
If the PB is this model

Apple PowerBook G4 1.0 15" (FW800 - Al) Specs (15-Inch FW800 - M8980LL/A) @ EveryMac.com

or any with Firewire, look for a Firewire external optical drive. PowerPC machines, which includes all G3, G4 and G5's will not boot from USB, even USB2.

Also an external Firewire hard drive will be bootable with an OS installed on it. Must be Apple Partition Map and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format however.

May well be simpler to install another internal optical drive?

It's a 1.5 GHz.

PowerBook G4 15" 1.5 GHz (@ EveryMac.com)

So with all that being said, what external dvd/cd burner should I buy?
 

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