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Enable features on some PowerBook G4 SuperDrives
Authored by: bogdescu on Sep 18, '03 03:09:34AM

Saudio he has researched the above-mentioned problem further and tracked its roots to the fact that 17-inchers don't start up on older Jaguar CD's - they need the DVD that came with them.
So it was not the firmware upgrade's fault, his PB starts just fine with the original OSX DVD...
Thanks Saudio!



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Enable features on some PowerBook G4 SuperDrives
Authored by: televisionmind on Sep 18, '03 12:30:18PM

hmm...ok, i'm confused.
saudio said he had a Titanium PB, which is a 15-inch.

bogdescu, you said that the 17-inch couldn't boot from older Jaguar disc.

was saudio trying to boot from an older jaguar disc on his 15-inch Tibook? meaning that the updated superdrive is now "behaving" like a 17-inch?

just want to cover all my bases before flashing my new PB



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Enable features on some PowerBook G4 SuperDrives
Authored by: bogdescu on Sep 18, '03 01:47:41PM

Sorry, my mistake, Saudio's was a 15-inch indeed (the 'titanium' says it).
In the meantime I flashed my 17-incher.
DVD burning speed jumped to 2x as advertized (tested on apple branded media).
I failed however to burn DVDRW's but this may be because of media incompatibility (tried Imation's DVDRW discs version 1.1). Neither Toast (5.2.1) nor Disc Copy could write those, though Disc Copy could erase them.
Of course nothing happened to my CD writing speed, that is uncrippled on 17inchers anyway.
Will post if I manage to burn DVDRW's.
BTW - on the 17inch the upgrade is a one-way ticket, there is no way to return to the factory software on your drive... see the manual for more details.
On a boot-related note, I tried to start my machine from a 10.0.3 OSX cd but it woulnd't start. My guess is that this is not related to the new firmware - that OS is ancient :-). Have not tried the original CD yet... To be honest I am not very concerned, since my reinstals usually amount to carbon-copy-cloning back from a backup partition on an external FW drive. Also (just as Saudio did) one can target-firewire the PB to another machine to solve the problem.



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Enable features on some PowerBook G4 SuperDrives
Authored by: televisionmind on Sep 18, '03 03:12:15PM

Well, you can target FW the powerbook...if you've got another mac.

So, was saudio ever able to boot his PB from the Jaguar DVD? Or was the work-around the only solution?



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Enable features on some PowerBook G4 SuperDrives
Authored by: bogdescu on Sep 23, '03 12:10:21PM

apparently yes, he was able to boot it from the PB original startup DVD (but not from the jag one)



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