CDR's + Powerbook 1400c/166

#1 Sat, 21 Apr 2012 - 16:25 68kMLA

Hello, I have a powerbook 1400c w/ OS 9 and the 12x CDROM module. It refuses to read any of my CDR's, but will read a normal CD just fine. Is there a way I can get a CDR to work?

Thanks!

#2 Sat, 21 Apr 2012 - 18:51 68kMLA

Never had a problem with mine. Something about the media? Is this CD-R, not -RW?

#3 Sat, 21 Apr 2012 - 19:46 68kMLA

They are CDR's, and these CDR's do work on my other early mac systems...is there a better CDROM extension I could use?

#4 Sun, 22 Apr 2012 - 03:47 68kMLA

It may be a dying optical drive. My 8x drive works fine reading CD-R's in 8.6 or 9.x

As you are lucky enough to have the 12x drive, you can easily replace it with the 24x Teac Drive.

#5 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 - 23:40 68kMLA

Thanks guys, I was able to get some of the CD's to work by re-burning them, but the drive is kind of picky. I am going to try and substitute a generic 24x Teac drive in the system to hopefully fix the drive's fussiness.

#6 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 - 17:58 68kMLA

Let us know how that goes, Brooklyn.

#7 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 - 18:04 68kMLA

yeah my macos 8.6 and OS9 burns work in the apple 2x-i300 4x-i600 scsi drives, just normal cd blanks from microcenter,

#8 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 - 23:24 68kMLA

Oh... kayyyy...

Brooklyn: the 1400 CD repair detailed here may or may not also be totally unrelated to your problem:

viewtopic.php?p=172333#p172333

#9 Tue, 1 May 2012 - 15:06 68kMLA

Cool. I just got a 24x cdrw teac drive in the mail yesterday. Connector looks the same as the stock one. I hope it works! Maybe I can burn discs also?

#10 Thu, 3 May 2012 - 05:15 68kMLA

That sound's great!

As far as I know, one's ability to burn CDs in the classic Mac OS depends upon the burner used being supported by the one's software. It shouldn't pose a problem for reading disks, though (provided you're using a relatively recent version of Mac OS).

You could try Toast (5.x needs Mac OS 9.x, but 4.x or older should work if you're using 8.5 or 8.6)

Take this advice with a grain of salt. I may be totally wrong!

c

#11 Sun, 6 Jan 2013 - 19:29 68kMLA

Late response but I did successfully use the Teac drive on my 1400c, it reads any CD I throw at it. However, Toast 4 does not detect the drive as a CD burner...

#12 Fri, 11 Jan 2013 - 05:30 68kMLA

Can you boot from the transplanted drive? How does Apple System Profiler describe the drive?