Pioneer 106d problems in Mac OSX 10.5.5

[manmachine]

Hi Guy's I hope you can help with the following problem that i have.

I have a problem that has arisen with my G5 Power Mac. About a Year ago my machine stopped burning TDK DVD-R Discs so i changed to Sony branded Discs and things were ok.

All has been well untill yesterday when i tried to read some of the TDK DVD-R discs that were burned with my machine and none of them work.
I have tried Discs from different batches and none are recognized by the drive.

My TDK CD-R80 burned years before all work. Also older Apple DVD-R Discs are also working.

Do You have any ideas?. I am on Mac OSX 10.5.5 with 1.5 GB of SDRAM.

Kind Regards

[direwolf-pgh]

you arent alone

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=119453&tstart=0

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/pioneer-dvr106d-burns-but-won-t-mount-dvds-on-my-mac-g5-t352983.html

try a firmware update - then replace the drive

2¢

[manmachine]

This all happened after i installed OSX 10.5 before everything worked fine.

Strange thing is about this is that the machine will mount TDK DVD-R discs that someone else has burned.

Where can i find firmware updates for this drive as the Pioneer website has only Windows downloads?.

[Karst]

The firmware is Mac, but as you have already installed 10.5 these updates probably will have run already, otherwise it wouldn't have run probably. Can you remember how you burned the discs? Seems to me that the drive probably doesn't recognise the structure on the disc.

[manmachine]

The discs were burned using Toast 6 Titanium and done as DVD-ROM(UDF) files.

[direwolf-pgh]

if you do a search on Pioneer 106D you get two full pages of people having the exact same issue (spanning years)

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=592506&


The solution at least on my G5:

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Go to CDs & DVDs
3. Change the option for 'When you insert a blank CD' to 'Open Finder'
4. Change the option for "When you insert a blank DVD' to 'Open Finder'
5. Quit.

Bingo, it worked.

another person created a "dummy account" to login with - and all was well.
It seems the drivers with Toast are fighting with the OS

since Macs never have problems Im not going to post any more thoughts - as this is all in our heads :D

good luck

[ffooky]

Sorry if it's an obvious question but have you tried updating to a non-Apple supplied firmware with DVRFlash (http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/) ?

[manmachine]

The solution at least on my G5:

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Go to CDs & DVDs
3. Change the option for 'When you insert a blank CD' to 'Open Finder'
4. Change the option for "When you insert a blank DVD' to 'Open Finder'
5. Quit.

Bingo, it worked.

Tried the above still not working.

Sorry if it's an obvious question but have you tried updating to a non-Apple supplied firmware with DVRFlash ?

No i have not tried this option.

[manmachine]

Would resetting the PRAM make a difference?.

[Karst]

Never has done anything for me. To be honest I think this is an issue of a faulty disc. The Mac clearly is not reading the infrastructure on it. Have you tried it on a different machine?

[direwolf-pgh]

karst, resetting the pram used to almost always root out the wonky issues in the OS.. but those were system 7, 8, 9 days.

read some of the links posted - hundreds of people posting on Apple forums that its a common issue with that model drive. and if you read the comments in the links further - few ever solve it & no one has a 'sure cure'..those who did get it resolved each used different means.

bunk hardware/firmware/OS compatibility sez I. replacing the hardware is a sure cure for $60

[Karst]

Ah, OS 9 when things were so...uncomplicated. I read the links, but I think his G5 is more recent model?

[Aimee Wilbury]

Do you have another computer to work with? If so, and if you don't have 5000 discs, you might be able to just re-burn them.

Could you swap the optical drive around and see if another one will read it? (Optical drives are pretty cheap, at least for PCs.)

I'm not familiar with Macs, or I'd help more. Did you change anything other than the OS? Maybe flashing the BIOS? (I don't even know if there is a BIOS in Macs.)