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+--- Thread: Weird Powerbook problem: optical drive only reads ISO9600 volumes (/showthread.php?tid=27661)
Weird Powerbook problem: optical drive only reads ISO9600 volumes - Silencio - 02-08-2007
So, my friend's 15" 1.67GHz AlBook presented all the usual symptoms of a dying optical drive: he said he'd stick regular old CDs or DVDs in the drive, and the system would tell him the disc was unreadable or blank. He took the machine to the local Genius Bar and they also said "bad optical drive". So we just went ahead and ordered a replacement internal optical drive, which I installed without too much fuss.
Problem solved? Nope. I tried to boot off a system installer CD by holding down the "c" key on boot. No dice. When the Finder loaded (off the system on the internal hard drive), it said the disc was unreadable. Guh? Eject disc and try another one. No love! Finally, I tried a CD-ROM that had both HFS+ and ISO9660 partitions on it, and... just the ISO partition showed up! So I tried a couple of other discs that were dual-partition or just PC-only, with similar results.
So, must be a problem with the install of 10.4.8 on that Powerbook, right? I'll just boot off my clean 10.4.8 system on my external Firewire drive. Exact same story.
I tried all the other sundry troubleshooting tips: reset NVRAM, PRAM, PMU, repaired permissions, blah blah &c. My only other guess is that there's a logic board problems -- say, the secondary ATA controller or something.
And yes, I did search Apple Discussions pretty thoroughly. I just saw a few dozen threads describing very similar symptoms (though nobody said anything about successfully reading ISO9660 optical media), and no solutions in sight.
What's up wit' dat?
Re: Weird Powerbook problem: optical drive only reads ISO9600 volumes - D-Rod - 02-08-2007
Wow, that is weird. Because it is the same for the firewire drive I don't think it is the ATA controller but I can offer no insight. I will keep my eye out for info though.
Re: Weird Powerbook problem: optical drive only reads ISO9600 volumes - Silencio - 02-08-2007
Like I said, I replaced the internal optical drive. Swapped out the old Matshita Superdrive with a newer model from OWC. Despite the new drive, the (lack of) functionality is pretty much the same. I didn't think to try an ISO9660 disc in the old drive, though.