External burner does not burn (was: burner question)

[mcphero_74]

This is a follow up to a posting I made late last year about an external CD/DVD burner with firewire connection to an eMac 800 running OS 10.3.9. The shop I bought the burner from tested it and it works correctly as far as they're concerned. I can't burn directly from iTunes, and instead must use Roxio Toast, which restricts me to burning data discs. I vaguely remember someone on this forum suggesting an OS upgrade. Would getting OS 10.4 solve this problem?

[stewiesno1]

"Patchburn", a free utility may help you there too. It enables you to burn from other applications that should be supported by Apple as well as using burners that are not officially supported by Apple.
An update to Tiger may also help and especially if you install the combo 10.11 updater.

Stewie

[mcphero_74]

Thanks for the advice. Does anyone know where I can buy Tiger from; preferably the CD-ROM version just to be on the safe side? Maybe someone on this forum has a copy to sell.

[Byrd]

I suspect the reason why it was suggested to upgrade to Tiger is not only are more apps supported and it will run faster, but more DVD burners are supported natively by this OS. So by all means try Patchburn on 10.3.9 and see how you go, and Roxio's Toast should also work. If it still doesn't work, I'd suggest the drive model you have isn't compatible with OS X - most are, but there are a few that don't conform to a standard that OS X agrees with.

JB

[stewiesno1]

I don't know which burner you have in your external box but if you go here
Accelerate Your Mac! Mac Drive Upgrades/Compatibility Database
and just enter in the model field and manufacturer field , you may also get a couple of hits from other owners with that particular model and what they did to get it to work properly for them.

Stewie