Buying an IDE burner- for the iMac? 26
danboid asks: "I'm going to buy an 'internal' IDE burner for my iMac (revision A- I have to open it up and lead an IDE cable out and buy a power supply for it though!) so I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations or could tell me what to look out for or avoid. I will probably be burning under Linux but I'd like to get a burning program for Mac OS X- has anybody had any experience with such a setup?"
iMac -- Firewire (Score:2, Insightful)
And what is wrong with a Firewire burner? Or an external burner? After all, isn't that the draw of an iMac? Basics in a convenient case, with lots of plugs to connect external devices. Old iMac, or new? Old iMac might require that you use USB instead of Firewire if you are to go the external route.
Some more information would be helpful as to the choice of path you are planning to take. If it is just for a 'l33t case mod' then I think you are on your own.
Re:iMac -- Firewire (Score:1)
Re:iMac -- Firewire (Score:2)
The Rev A iMac doesn't have FireWire ports. Unless you know something we don't, FireWire isn't an option.
For external options, there's SCSI and USB left. USB sucks really hard for CD-RW drives. My girlfriend bought a QPS Que! drive for her Rev B iMac. Besides being a horrible company, their drive is shit too, but some of that I fear has something to do with the speed of USB.
SCSI may be an option, see this [theimac.com]. I'm not sure how easy these SCSI cards for the mezzanine slot in the Rev A and B iMacs are to come around anymore. My girlfriend has a Voodoo2 in her iMac and it works great. A USB-SCSI converter wouldn't be advisable.
I've seen an *internal* iMac CD-RW model or two, but they were pretty spendy. I'm told they they were kind of flaky too. I think your best bet would be to have an external enclosure.
Re:iMac -- Firewire (Score:2, Informative)
Re:iMac -- Firewire (Score:2)
Re:iMac -- Firewire (Score:1)
QPS. (Score:2)
It probably does. I've got the QPS Que!Fire drive on my iMac here, and it works like a champ. Not a single coaster yet, and the Apple stuff (iTunes, for instance) supports it as well.
--saint
QPS (again) (Score:2)
Incidentally, I hear that when you're burning at faster speeds, the pits get burned with less definition, so they're more prone to errors and degradation over time. So I'm glad I didn't spend more money on a faster drive. Because of this, I usually burn at 4x or 8x these days. For audio CDs, they'll stil sound alright if there's errors, since CD players can compensate. Here's a quote from a Q&A in "Keyboard" magazine:
"I've found that I can burn at 4x without any problems, but I make sure I've allocated the maximum amount of memory to the burning software's RAM cache (64MB in the case of Toast)."
Extrenal (Score:1)
Re:Extrenal (Score:3, Informative)
USB is only 12Mbit. While that's plenty for lots of things, it's not good for data storage. He'll likely only get 1.4MB/sec MAX, and with that upper limit, it's only safe to burn at 4x or slower. Lame.
Re:Extrenal (Score:2)
Re:Extrenal (Score:1)
No assumptions were made.
Check xlr8yourmac.com... (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, you didn't indicate whether you have one of the original iMacs or a slot-loading model, but it should be possible in either case.
Good luck!
-A.
Re:Check xlr8yourmac.com... (Score:2)
oops. (Score:1)
If anything, though, that should make it easier for the poster if he changes his mind and decides to put the drive in the case instead of snaking cables out the side. The Rev. A's CD-ROM was just a standard laptop drive, pretty common form factor these days for all sorts of CD flavors (-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD/CDRW, etc.)
-A.
Re:Check xlr8yourmac.com... (Score:1)
Where do I get one of those Y-cable HD power splitter cables from though?
Y-cables... (Score:1)
-A.
YAMAHA (Score:1)
No offense, but... (Score:2)
Not that you can't do it, but consider getting an external (Firewire!), that way you can burn CD-to-CD and rip even faster in iTunes. Plus, when you dump your iMac, you've still got a useful CD-RW - check out dealmac.com [dealmac.com] for good daily prices
Re:No offense, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't go for USB, it's not worth it. But do check eveything out before you start cutting, I spent 10+ hours of research and 4 hours of work for my simple mod.
Upgrade or go intended-external (Score:2)
This is the original iMac: Bondi Blue, 233 MHz, 2MB Rage+ video, mezzanine slot that was never used, really evil origami-style assembly.
To run MacOS X on this is, well, it's doable but it is painful. I bought MacOS X for my rev. B (same but with 6 MB video RAM) and finally scrubbed it off as too slow to be practical on this 4 year old hardware. Apparently you're a more patient person then I.
You're going to have to run the IDE cable off of the same bus the existing hard drive is on, chop a hole in the case to feed it out. Then you're going to have to find a compatible burner, trick it out it in a case of some sort (nekked electronics often come to bad ends) as well as that power supply. Now comes the problem of getting everything recognized...
My advice would be forget creating a Frankenstein-machine and move up to a machine that comes with it. Or go USB.
Slamming USB CD-RW's (Score:2)