iBook 14" G4 1.42 Burning Questions

Hello all, I have a 14" 1.42 iBook with the "SuperDrive".

Here is what Apple's site says about it:

The SuperDrive on a 14-inch iBook G4 writes DVD±R discs at up to 8x speed, writes DVD±RW discs at up to 4x speed, reads DVDs at up to 8x speed, writes CD-R discs at up to 24x speed, writes CD-RW discs at up to 16x speed and reads CDs at up to 24x speed.

Click to expand...

Now, all of that being said... when trying to burn with an 8x DVD+R, I get nothing more than 2x in Toast (7.0.2 Titanium). The same thing using disk utility. Why can't I get full burning speed?

Also, the drive is capable of burning DL discs (I have not tried yet), but I did find this site: http://guides.macrumors.com/Superdrive - which states:

Mat****a UJ-845E*
o Burns CD-R's at 24x, CD-RW's at 16x, DVD-R's at 8x and DVD-RW's at 4x

* This drive physically supports Dual Layer burning, but is currently disabled by Apple's firmware.

Click to expand...

With that information, what's going to happen when I try to burn a DL disc, I would guess that it won't work... is there a way to enable DL burning? I am running 10.4.6 with all updates applied, here are the further specs from System Profiler:

Hardware Overview:

Machine Name: iBook G4
Machine Model: PowerBook6,7
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.5)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.42 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 512 MB
Bus Speed: 142 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.9.3f0
Serial Number: 4H5360VLSE9
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
Version: 1.0



MAT****A DVD-R UJ-845E:

Firmware Revision: DMP2
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media: No





I did some digging back through this forum and didn't really see anything that would help me on this one. Thanks in advance!

If you have iDVD 6, it should be able to burn DL discs...
As for the speed issue, I'd try different media or possibly download Patchburn and see what that can do...

Aptmunich said:

If you have iDVD 6, it should be able to burn DL discs...
As for the speed issue, I'd try different media or possibly download Patchburn and see what that can do...

Click to expand...

I do have iDVD 6, I'll install it and see what happens... can I burn dmg's via iDVD?

Thanks for the information.

No, only video files to a video DVD.

But do you really want to burn dmg's to a DL DVD? They're so expensive (7-10$ a disc) that I'd try to avoid them if you can. (using 2 regular DVD's is much cheaper!)

I think apple will never enable DL burining in your ibook despite the drive can do it. Whenever they release the iBook that can do DL they will look at that as a feature the older one could not do. LOL some marketing gimmick