Ibook W/os9 Plays Audio Cd, But Not Data Cd

applemaz

Registered
My iBook G3/300 (Rev B - M7718LL/A) can mount Music CD's and play them without a problem. However, when I put a data CD (Mac OS9 or Mac OSX or what have you) in, a box comes up saying it cannot read it and asks if I want to format or eject
it. When I restart and hold down C to boot off the CDROM, it just boots off my hard drive. When I restart and hold down Option to see if the CDROM drive shows up as a bootable drive (with an OS9 CD inside), it does not, only my Hard Drive shows up.

I have all the extensions installed (Apple Audio Extension, Apple CD/DVD Driver, Apple Photo Access, Audio CD Access, Foreign File Access, ISO 9660 File Access and UDF Volume Access). There are NO Iomega or Toast extensions installed so they cannot conflict.

There are 2 things I noticed though (I bought this off ebay by the way). The first is, there are folders at the root of the hard drive which indicate someone attempted to install OSX on the machine (for example a second system folder, a mach file, mach_kernel file and .OSInstall-temp folder among others). The
second is a FWUpdate 4.1.7.sit file on the desktop. This is NOT a FireWire iBook (it is the single USB one).

Could it be that either running this FireWire Update screwed up the firmware or perhaps a botched OSX install did something? Do you have any ideas on getting the CDROM to read Data CD's? Remember, it reads and plays Audio CD's just fine and the drive also shows up in the Apple System Profiler. I rebuilt the desktop and zapped the PRAM already.

The version of the Apple CD/DVD Driver in the Extension Manager says it is 1.4.7. Do you know if I can replace this and all of the other essential extensions I listed above with those from an OS9 v 9.1 CD and perhaps fix this problem (I have an airport card as well as Ethernet so I can connect this iBook to my PM G5 Dual 2GHz without a problem and use the mounted CD in my PM)?

Any advice would be appreciated!

Michael
 
That update file that you found - the one named FWUpdate 4.1.7.sit - the FW does not mean FireWire. It means FirmWare - it is a firmware update for any iBook of that series (all clamshell iBooks) so that updater is OK, and should not be causing problems installed on a 'wrong' model. Any Apple firmware update that I have ever seen, refuses to install on the wrong system. You can't force it to install on the wrong system.
If your CD drive will not mount any data disk, and will not boot with an OS 9 installer CD, then it's likely the drive needs to be replaced. The Audio CD function is a separate hardware function of the drive, and could work OK, without the data read working at all.
You should double-check the surface on a disk that should boot, that it is clear of scratches. Wipe the disk surface anyway, with a soft, dry cloth, and try again. This probably won't help, but you should always assure that the disk surface is as clean as you can make it.
 
Back
Top