G5 Optical Drive Wierdness

[Marvin42]

Hi, I just acquired a G5 2.0 with 2 Gb ram and a nice fresh Leopard 10.5.8. The Optiarc optical drive has the following characteristics:
-Reads and imports audio CDs
-Burns audio and photo CDs, but gives message 'verification failed', yet they load and read fine on another 'puter. This machine will not read the files, though, opening gives a grey folder icon with jpg at the bottom and a big question mark.
-Identifies some data CDs and DVDs as blank even though they load fine elsewhere. This includes manufacturers' disks eg iLife.
-Shows other data DVDs on the desktop with some characters in the title replaced by what appears to be a Chinese character. On opening, files are visible but will not open. Some files are labeled .exe files. All these disks work fine on another machine.
-The Leopard install disk shows on the desktop labeled 'Boot Camp' (although the a is replaced by a sort of squiggly thing) and contains .exe files amongst others, none of these files will open. On my other machine it shows as 'Mac OS X install disk'.
-the driver DVD that came with my Canon MP560 has drivers for Windoze and Mac, it worked fine in 4 other Macs (3 Leopard and one Tiger) and a PC but in this one it does not run, instead it offers .exe files.

I have tried the following:
Download drivers from Apple - none were needed or appropriate.
Replace the optical drive with a new Samsung which Scrumpymacs kindly sent me - no difference.
Replaced that with a known good Pioneer 117 - exactly the same symptoms.
Swap the jumper from Master (the original and new drives were both set to Master) to Cable Select - no change.
Permissions Repair - no difference.
Set up a new admin user account - still the same.

Apart from this the computer is great. Scrumpymacs have offered me a replacement computer when they get one, can't fault their service at all, but if there is a fix I would like to hang on to this one. Any ideas, anyone?

 

[Marvin42]

I just tried a few more things:
-fitted a different IDE cable
-booted from Leopard on a Firewire external hard drive

Nothing makes any difference. Is there some way in which the optical drive thinks it's in a PC?

 

[harryb2448]

Pretty common fault with Cony Optiarc optical drives and if you do a Google you will find this problem. Here is one link to get you started:-

Powermac G5 Superdrive will only read music - The macosxhints Forums

Personally great supporter of Pioneer drives, which are recognised as native, are as cheap as chips and it is a snack replacing in your G5 tower. But as I guess your are also Allan42, you will know this?

 

[Marvin42]

Yep, guilty as charged, dual personalities rule and I am unanimous in this. I agree with you about the Pioneer drives, the one I put into my old MDD 1.25 single worked a treat although it hasn't solved the current problem with the G5. Many thanks, Marvin/Alan

 

[hughvane]

What model of Pioneer optical did you put in your G4 MDD? As a guide to solving your present G5 opt-drive issues, consider a Pioneer 116D minimum.

 

[Marvin42]

Thanks, the drive is a Pioneer 117, it gives the same results as the Optiarc that came with the computer and the Samsung SH-S222 that they sent as a replacement.

What puzzles me most is the characters that appear in the middle of file names when I load a DVD: the restore disk appears on the desktop as 'Boot C聡mp' and the Canon printer driver disk is labelled CANON_聉J.

聡 is Satoshi or Satoru, a Japanese boy's name meaning fast learner.

聉 is Han or Mandarin Chinese, pronounced wa or wai, and appears to mean foolish or crazy.

BTW, I tried zapping the PRAM to no avail, I also reset the PMU. I also found that inserting a purchased pre-recorded DVD causes DVD Player to open, but the 'play' option is shaded and no files are found on the disk, which plays fine elsewhere. Booting from the Firewire drive which has a copy of the 10.5.8 which I use on my other machine still gives the same behavior (although rather slowly). As we say in this part of the world (snowy Nofolk, UK) 'thaas a rum'un, bor'. Is there the remotest possibility of a bug or virus in the firmware? I have 5.2.4f1 and Apple say I don't need an update.

 

[Marvin42]

OH, Bother! I just returned to what had been a peacefully sleeping Mac to find dark screen, fans at warp factor whatever and no keyboard response. I forced shutdown and restarted OK. Here is the console log, in the hope that someone can help me to interpret it?

22/02/2010 11:41:00 [0x0-0x18018].org.mozilla.firefox[129] Debugger() was called!
22/02/2010 13:38:16 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd-wake[225]) Exited with exit code: 1
22/02/2010 14:44:18 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd-wake[259]) Exited with exit code: 1
22/02/2010 15:10:39 com.apple.launchctl.System[2] fsck_hfs: Volume is journaled. No checking performed.
22/02/2010 15:10:39 com.apple.launchctl.System[2] fsck_hfs: Use the -f option to force checking.
22/02/2010 15:10:41 com.apple.launchctl.System[2] launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist
22/02/2010 15:10:41 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.RemoteDesktop.PrivilegeProxy) Unknown key for boolean: EnableTransactions
22/02/2010 15:10:41 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.usbmuxd) Unknown key for boolean: EnableTransactions
22/02/2010 15:10:41 com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight
22/02/2010 15:10:41 com.apple.launchd[1] (org.ntp.ntpd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight
22/02/2010 15:10:41 com.apple.launchd[1] (org.x.privileged_startx) Unknown key for boolean: EnableTransactions
22/02/2010 15:11:08 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow[70]) Exited: Terminated
22/02/2010 15:11:08 com.apple.launchd[76] (org.x.startx) Unknown key for boolean: EnableTransactions

 

[hughvane]

In your situation, I, myself, personally (all three of us) would boot that iMac from the/an original OS install disk and run a hardware check with Disk Utility > First Aid > Verify Disk. You may be able to Repair disk as well. Unfortunately you cannot repair a startup volume using Disk Utility from the iMac.

Failing that, do you have Disk Warrior, or access to it? DW is top shelf in terms of analysing and repairing both OS and hardware faults.

 

[Marvin42]

Thanks all of you, we took a vote and did disk verify and repair and permissions repair on the startup disk after booting from the Firewire drive. There were a few permissions repaired, but the disk verified OK. No change on the DVD issue. We've heard about Disk Warrior, if the committee agrees I'll try and get delegated authority to acquire it. Gosh, it's getting crowded in here...

 

[Marvin42]

OK, in case anyone in the future finds this thread and follows it to the bitter end in the hopeful anticipation of a fix.... nothing anyone suggested made any difference. I took the whole machine back to the dealer, having told described the problem, he put in a selection of disks and in every case the computer found, but could not open, Windows files, displaying the names with an oriental character inserted. "Well," he said, "Ive never seen that before! Look at this, Fred..." Fred hadn't seen it before either. He swapped the hard drives into another G5, checked it worked, put it into a box for me and I went on my way rejoicing. No problems since then. Whoopee!