Quetion on burning/CD drives...

[shekter]

I've been trying to burn programs on to CDs to no avail. I have an emac. Mac OS X 10.2.8 (or it's 10.4.8). I can get back to you on that if you feel it's important to the issue.

And so... the issue!

My mac plays audio CDs, and it plays CDs that have programs on them, but it doesn't read blank CDs. I put one in the drive, and nothing happens.

Also, going along with not registering the existance of blank CDs... I've been trying to use Disk Copy to burn CDs. I get as far as having an image copy, but then I go to the "Burn" option in the "File" menu, but the option to Burn is faded out.

I've tried the blank CDs in my dad's Windows laptop, and they work fine there, so I'm assuming it's the mac.

Is there a way I can find out if my mac can't read blank CDs. And if it can't read blank CDs, can you give me some advice as to what I should get so that the mac can read blank CDs, burn etc...

Thanks.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Need your specific eMac details shekter. Also the Version of Mac OS you have installed.

 

[shekter]

Re: Question on burning/CD drives...

The version of Mac OS X that I have is 10.2.8.

And I'm just going to give you the info found under "About this Mac"...

Memry: 384MB
Processor: 800MHz PwerPC G4

And for the added info that came from the "System Profile" tab when I asked for more info...

Machine Speed: 800MHz
Bus Speed: 133MHz
Number of Processors: 1
L2 Cache Speed Size: 256K
Machine Model: eMac version 2.1
Boot ROM info: 4.6.4f1

The rest of the info under that tab were serial numbers and other odd ends that didn't seem to fit what you were asking for... I'm hoping that this info is helpful, if not, letme know.

Thanks!

 

[Walrus666]

Re: Question on burning/CD drives...

The version of Mac OS X that I have is 10.2.8.

And I'm just going to give you the info found under "About this Mac"...

Memry: 384MB
Processor: 800MHz PwerPC G4

And for the added info that came from the "System Profile" tab when I asked for more info...

Machine Speed: 800MHz
Bus Speed: 133MHz
Number of Processors: 1
L2 Cache Speed Size: 256K
Machine Model: eMac version 2.1
Boot ROM info: 4.6.4f1

The rest of the info under that tab were serial numbers and other odd ends that didn't seem to fit what you were asking for... I'm hoping that this info is helpful, if not, letme know.

Thanks!

Hello, what you can do is go back to your System Profiler and click on "Disc Burning" and see if your drive can write CD's.

 

[Mr. MacWare]

even if your computer can't write cd's it should still recognize a blank disc when inserted. Go under System preferences and click on "cd's and dvd's" and make sure none of the settings are set to "ignore"

 

[Mr. MacWare]

I did a background check on the emac using the mactracker application. Without knowing the graphics card I cant tell, and even with it it would be difficult. The best thing to do is go under system profiler and click on ata and looking for "CD-ROM"or "CD-RW". If it's the former its not capable of burning cd's. I'm willing to bet this is the case from your original message. You may want to try using a program that creates disk images. Those disk images could then be burnt by any computer, even a windows laptop, though it might require some software. FreeDMG is a good freeware way to do this, but idk if it'll run on 10.2

 

[Walrus666]

even if your computer can't write cd's it should still recognize a blank disc when inserted. Go under System preferences and click on "cd's and dvd's" and make sure none of the settings are set to "ignore"

Even if the CD settings are set to "ignore", the burn option should still be available. I believe that this model shipped with a superdrive but I wanted to make sure by having Shekter check out his CD burning profile. Assuming that no one changed the drive, I'd be surprised to find that it can't burn CD's. Actually, I should say that I'd be surprised to find that it wasn't designed to burn CD's as the drives that Apple uses for their eMacs are designed to burn CD's but fail to do so after a while because of their incredibly short life spans. Yet, even with a faulty drive that's capable of writing to discs (assuming that Shekter has one), the burn option should still be available.
Shekter, have you tried burning a disc from a Burn Folder?

 

[shekter]

even if your computer can't write cd's it should still recognize a blank disc when inserted. Go under System preferences and click on "cd's and dvd's" and make sure none of the settings are set to "ignore"

I checked the System Preferences for CDs and DVDs. It was set to "Ask what to do" but to be specific, I changed it to "Open Disk Copy." I put in a blank CD and nothing happened.

I did a background check on the emac using the mactracker application. Without knowing the graphics card I cant tell, and even with it it would be difficult. The best thing to do is go under system profiler and click on ata and looking for "CD-ROM"or "CD-RW". If it's the former its not capable of burning cd's. I'm willing to bet this is the case from your original message. You may want to try using a program that creates disk images. Those disk images could then be burnt by any computer, even a windows laptop, though it might require some software. FreeDMG is a good freeware way to do this, but idk if it'll run on 10.2

I went to System Profile, and under the Device and Volumes tab I found the answer. There are a bunch of arrow diagrams, and the one labeled "BUS" led to two things... The first led to the Hard Drive and the second led to CD-ROM, so I'm guessing I don't have the proper gear on the mac.

Also, where would I find out what type of graphic card I have?

And I'll look into FreeDMG to see if that'll work with 10.2.

Even if the CD settings are set to "ignore", the burn option should still be available. I believe that this model shipped with a superdrive but I wanted to make sure by having Shekter check out his CD burning profile. Assuming that no one changed the drive, I'd be surprised to find that it can't burn CD's. Actually, I should say that I'd be surprised to find that it wasn't designed to burn CD's as the drives that Apple uses for their eMacs are designed to burn CD's but fail to do so after a while because of their incredibly short life spans. Yet, even with a faulty drive that's capable of writing to discs (assuming that Shekter has one), the burn option should still be available.
Shekter, have you tried burning a disc from a Burn Folder?

I don't know what a Burn Folder is... So far, all I've tried was using Disc Copy to create a Image File (I think that's what it was called). And following the directions that I found on the Apple site, I'm supposed to then select "Burn Image" from the File menu, but that's when I hit my problem... A box pops up that says "Could not find any suitable drives to burn disk."

I'm sorry that I am so clueless to such simple things, but the mac was a recent addition to my life.

Edit:

I have another question that I just thought of... Because my mac doesn't have the proper gear to burn CDs, what should I do if I wanted to make the mac capable of burning CDs? I'm assuming getting FreeDMG isn't going to cut it if I don't have the actual hardware so any help would be appreciated.

 

[Walrus666]

I checked the System Preferences for CDs and DVDs. It was set to "Ask what to do" but to be specific, I changed it to "Open Disk Copy." I put in a blank CD and nothing happened.



I went to System Profile, and under the Device and Volumes tab I found the answer. There are a bunch of arrow diagrams, and the one labeled "BUS" led to two things... The first led to the Hard Drive and the second led to CD-ROM, so I'm guessing I don't have the proper gear on the mac.

Also, where would I find out what type of graphic card I have?

And I'll look into FreeDMG to see if that'll work with 10.2.



I don't know what a Burn Folder is... So far, all I've tried was using Disc Copy to create a Image File (I think that's what it was called). And following the directions that I found on the Apple site, I'm supposed to then select "Burn Image" from the File menu, but that's when I hit my problem... A box pops up that says "Could not find any suitable drives to burn disk."

I'm sorry that I am so clueless to such simple things, but the mac was a recent addition to my life.

Edit:

I have another question that I just thought of... Because my mac doesn't have the proper gear to burn CDs, what should I do if I wanted to make the mac capable of burning CDs? I'm assuming getting FreeDMG isn't going to cut it if I don't have the actual hardware so any help would be appreciated.

Have you tried checking under "disc burning" in your System Profiler?

 

[Mr. MacWare]

A burn folder is a concept introduced in mac os 10.4 and does not apply to your computer.

It was made to solve the problem that in previous versions of mac os to burn a disc you first had to make a copy of every file you were burning on your hard drive. If you had less space available on your hard drive than you did on the disc, it wouldn't work. However, in my opinion, and in the opinion of my father who is an excellent computer scientist, The way that the burn folders work is less intuitive and more difficult to learn than the old system, because every item in a burn folder is an alias. If you want to burn a disc with everything in a folder except for one item in a previous version of mac os, you would copy over the folder, double click on the folder and erase the file you didn't want to burn. With burn folders, if you double click on the folder in the burn folder, you will be in the actual folder, and deleting the file will actually remove it from your computer. What apple should have done is make it work and appear to the user like it had in 10.3 but actually made everything an alias, not just the folder but everything beneath it. That would solve the issue.

Sorry to go on about burn folders there

 

[Mr. MacWare]

In system preferences under CD's and DVD's, what are the different things that you can set? what is on that pane?

 

[Walrus666]

I think we got our answer-
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/emac/stats/emac_800_ati.html

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Are the blank CD's that you have -RW or +RW?

 

[Walrus666]

If this is the eMac that he has, much to my surprise it came with a standard optical drive and doesn't burn discs!
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/emac/stats/emac_800_ati.html
If this is the case, I'd recommend either getting a new internal optical drive put in or going with an external drive.

 

[shekter]

Have you tried checking under "disc burning" in your System Profiler?

In System Profiler, I didn't see anything called "disc burning", which is why I didn't mention it when you asked... But I double checked everything in System Profiler, and this was the closest to disc burning that I found...

Under the "Frameworks" tab there were two things...

"DiscRecording.framework" and "DiscRecordingUI.framework" and they give version numbers and the last update of those. I don't know if it means anything, or if I'm overlooking the "disc burning" area in System Profiler or what.

 

[Walrus666]

In System Profiler, I didn't see anything called "disc burning", which is why I didn't mention it when you asked... But I double checked everything in System Profiler, and this was the closest to disc burning that I found...

Under the "Frameworks" tab there were two things...

"DiscRecording.framework" and "DiscRecordingUI.framework" and they give version numbers and the last update of those. I don't know if it means anything, or if I'm overlooking the "disc burning" area in System Profiler or what.

I don't think that your drive burns discs. According to the link in my previous post it came with a standard optical 32X CD-ROM (If indeed this is your Mac) drive and these drives to the best of my knowledge don't burn.
I reread this thread and in addition you stated in one of your previous posts-
"I went to System Profile, and under the Device and Volumes tab I found the answer. There are a bunch of arrow diagrams, and the one labeled "BUS" led to two things... The first led to the Hard Drive and the second led to CD-ROM, so I'm guessing I don't have the proper gear on the mac."
I believe that your guess is correct. Sorry for not catching this sooner.

 

[shekter]

Sorry that I didn't see the previous posts... I didn't even realize there was a second page lol.

Thanks for helping me figure this ordeal out. So... to the next question... I was going to ask if there's a way to find out for sure if the mac I have is the mac in the link, but I don't think it matters since the answer has been found.

But another question... Which do you recommend for the easiest route? Should I go with the internal optical drive or the external drive? The external drive sounds easier since it can probabl be popped right into one of the USB ports, right? And any advice for what type of drive I should invest in would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[Walrus666]

Sorry that I didn't see the previous posts... I didn't even realize there was a second page lol.

Thanks for helping me figure this ordeal out. So... to the next question... I was going to ask if there's a way to find out for sure if the mac I have is the mac in the link, but I don't think it matters since the answer has been found.

But another question... Which do you recommend for the easiest route? Should I go with the internal optical drive or the external drive? The external drive sounds easier since it can probabl be popped right into one of the USB ports, right? And any advice for what type of drive I should invest in would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thanks again for all the help.

It's definitely easier going with an external drive. However, keep in mind that you have USB1.1 ports on your eMac. USB2 ports weren't available until the 1.25 GHz model eMac's were introduced. So, you might have compatibility issues with some of these newer drives that require USB2 ports. On the other hand you could connect via firewire on some of these newer drives as well. As far as going from USB2 to USB1.1 is concerned, I think that sometimes it will work on some things and sometimes it won't but if it does work, the output would be incredibly slow. I could be mistaken on this point. Spawn would be better equipped at answering this as I believe that he has a couple of older Macs sitting around. Perhaps he'll chime in and enlighten us. As far as the cost is concerned, the internal drives are around three times cheaper but if you bring it to a shop to have it installed it would cost about as much as getting an external drive.

 

[shekter]

What's firewire?

And I'll wait to see what Spawn has to say about the USB2 to USB 1.1 before I make any buys.

 

[Walrus666]

What's firewire?

And I'll wait to see what Spawn has to say about the USB2 to USB 1.1 before I make any buys.

You have two firewire ports on your eMac and you can use these instead of your USB1.1 ports.
Firewire-
http://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/firewire/index.html