Imac cd-rom upgradeable?

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled
A while back, my brother inserted a game cd at a odd angle into my 400Mhz SE imac. This bent the metal top of the cd-rom drive preventing me from inserting/removing disks without damage. After voiding my warranty, I got the imac open (without breaking the little plastic tabs located under the monitor.) and fixed to the best of my ability the cd-rom. My fix wasn't exactly the most glamorous fix but the drive works fine now.
My question to everyone is can I replace the cd-rom drive with a cd-rw drive from one of the newer g3's (600Mhz G3 imac models drive)? and if I do this, will I still be able to play dvd's?

Would appreciate your input.
 
I'm pretty sure you can do this, but you can't play DVDs with a CD-RW unless it is a Combo Drive.
 
Yea, I was afraid of that (no dvd support). but it seems odd that the low end models would have dvd support and the next revision with new cd rw drives not. Quite a step backwards if you ask me. It does "kind of" makes sense because of the dvd lawsuit thing though.

I was also wondering about upgrading my HD. Although I have heard of some quite literal meltdowns so perhaps I am pushing my luck with that upgrade.
 
I am pretty sure it can be done.

I KNOW that the tray loading ones can be replaced with special CD-RWs.

With the HD upgrade, I think as long as you stick with the same RPM drive, it's fine.
 
Originally posted by Untitled
Yea, I was afraid of that (no dvd support). but it seems odd that the low end models would have dvd support and the next revision with new cd rw drives not. Quite a step backwards if you ask me. It does "kind of" makes sense because of the dvd lawsuit thing though.

I was also wondering about upgrading my HD. Although I have heard of some quite literal meltdowns so perhaps I am pushing my luck with that upgrade.
Click to expand...

Two things. First, as it was mentioned, you can throw a cd-rw drive into your machine. As for the older units having dvd's and the newer ones having cd-rw's, it's really not a step backwards. Apple notied more people would be interested in backing up their data than watching a movie on their computer. Also, there's more to supporting dvd's than throwing a dvd drive in there. The unit needs an mpeg decoder, built onto the logic board in the iMac's.

I've not seen any problems with upgrading hd's. Some of the iMac's shipped out with 5400rpm and others with 7200rpm. Just depends on the model of the iMac, but all of them will support any ata drive. The only thing to note is, in rare cases, drive setup doesn't support every single hd. If you do replace the drive and are having problems formatting it you will need to get a third party utility, such as FWB.

Tim
 
Alright,
I think I'm going to try upgrading. Thanks for all of your help.

I would also ask you about upgrading my graphics card but it appears mine is soldered into my computer :D :rolleyes:
 
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