I have taken in 4 later Powerbook G3s (2 Lombard, 2 Pismo) and had a really rough time with DVD Drive modules for these. Out of 3 I've had three have been dead. Not surprising as they got heavy use in laptops of that era and the lasers are likely taco'd in them by now. I setout when I got my first dead one to see if I could replace it with a generic DVD drive I pulled from another laptop and initially hit a hard brick wall. The OEM drives have a physical switch on the underneath to switch between Master, Slave and Cable-Select modes. These switches are omitted on 90% of generic laptop drives from PC laptops, especially on newer drives that are the ones still working well these days.
After a lot of Googling around the subject I found a thread on MacRumours, or it might have been AppleFritter, rom about 2005 with various back-and-forth about replacing a stock drive with a DVD-RW or DVD/CD-RW drive. A lot of users tried it, all hit the same problem as me. But behold! One smart user found a solution in bridging out 2 pins in the IDE connector that performs the same function as the Master switch setting... but the link was dead. Thankfully archive.org came to my rescue and managed to dredge up a copy of it, and I archived it as a PDF.
I've attached it below. Easy mod that only needs simple tool and a careful dab of solder and huzzah! Problem solved. Any drive you put in it will act as Master and function just fine
Caveats:
After a lot of Googling around the subject I found a thread on MacRumours, or it might have been AppleFritter, rom about 2005 with various back-and-forth about replacing a stock drive with a DVD-RW or DVD/CD-RW drive. A lot of users tried it, all hit the same problem as me. But behold! One smart user found a solution in bridging out 2 pins in the IDE connector that performs the same function as the Master switch setting... but the link was dead. Thankfully archive.org came to my rescue and managed to dredge up a copy of it, and I archived it as a PDF.
I've attached it below. Easy mod that only needs simple tool and a careful dab of solder and huzzah! Problem solved. Any drive you put in it will act as Master and function just fine
Caveats:
- Apple used Panasonic and Hitachi-LG (Often labelled H-L Data Storage) units. These differ slightly on the front panel but the holders are functionally identical.
- You will of course need IDE drives. Double check before buying they are not SATA, SATA drives will not work and there's no room for an adapter.
- I have only tested a few drives so far from Toshiba, Pioneer, H-L Data Storage, and Lite-On. All work as far as copying in Mac OS 9.2.2,
The Lite-On possibly has issues fouling on the case in my Lombard when ejecting, or might haver an internal jam, I'm not sure thus far.
I've found the H-L and Pioneer work best thus far but YMMV. - You very likely won't get the original bezel to fit. I buy ones with black faceplates so they match the Powerbook and it's the best I've managed. There might be a 3D printable solution potentially but it may well be different for every manufacturer of drive as there's no bezel attachment standard for laptops.
- I haven't tested the CD or DVD burning compatibility of any of them, I simply wanted easy to acquire, cheap IDE drives and they are all DVD-RWs these days.
