when i try to burn cds and dvds i get an error (the device has drained its buffer underrun). took it into a mac service centre they charged me £70 to look at it and they didnt come up with anything. will burn very slowly on cdrw but i have over 200 blank cdr and dont want to waste them all. also when i insert cds into the superdrive it sometimes makes a horrid banging noise and will not recognise some discs. i thought it maybe a problem with memory as i was only running on the original 256mb now upgraded to 768mb. but still the same problem. the guys at the mac service centre are clueless about the problem with my machine. they told me they can fit a new superdrive for about £260. obviously i dont want to spend anymore money on this problem is there a way round it. thanks for your time
timski
imac g4

I think the thing about apple burn softw is that it doesn't give you the option to use buffer-under-run protection. Toast does!

I'd suggest you get a hold of Toast. Burn at minimum speed! What type of cd media are you using? Perhaps you should look at a better brand of media!

With such little amount of ram I'd suggest you don't run other apps at the same time as burning. Particularly LW! (More ram wouldn't hurt! 256-500 MB ram isn't that expensive. Particularly if you put it in yourself. The apple website have a quicktime movie which shows how to install ram.)

yeah ive now got 768mb ram. even using tost at slowest speed with no other apps running. still no joy

I had an issue with burning when I 1st got this computer. I had to disable some of the authoring extensions. But that was OS9.

What is your burner drive brand & model? Generally Mac use Pioneer for their dvd burners. But not always. I wonder if yours needs a driver update (I can't think of what you call it. Purely guesssing.)

And you tried Toast with buffer under-run protection. Next suggestion is to update your version of Toast. The later versions of Toast 6 give much better buffer underrun support.

I also came across these results: HERE which may lead to an answer! (Click on link)

Timski, I see your last post was 27/01. Have you still got problems or have you succumbed to the horror of technical services? (they will rip you off through trial and error). Your drive making a horrible noise does not bode well that that can be down to the type of media you are using. Could you please tell me:

1. What CDR are you using (200 of them?). ie. CD-RW or CD-R, type (eg. Sony, JVC, Ritek etc) and capacity (650 or 700Mb). Mac drives are very fussy if you use really cheap and nasty disks that are really only good for PC's (that's not a dig at PC's).

2. What software you have used to try and burn your files (i-tunes. toast etc.).

3. What type of files (data, audio (mp3? aac? aif?)).

4. Your drive type (click the apple symbol on you finer menu bar, select 'about this mac' / more info / hardware / ATA) - this will give the model.

Test: Have you tried to play an original audio cd in your drive? One that you bought in a shop? If this plays ok (without horrible noises) then we know that playback is not an issue. Have you tried to burn an audio track (just the 1 track - and yes it will waste a disk if it is CDR - but you've got 200!) to a disk (use i-tunes for this - it's less complicated). If this works then general burning is not a problem ie. it's not your disk burner / reader. So you wouldn't have to buy a new one. From this point we can try further tests and possibly diagnose the issue.

Oh I just remembered I had more than one issue with that cd burner I mentioned. The other was it couldn't burn at slower than 8 speed. Everytime I did it would come up with an error during the burn process. Since I had been use to burning audio at single speed I found that amazing & not very impressive. It took two visits to the mac tech support without solution & over 6 months later before I discovered it by accident. But that was a cd burner not a dvd burner.

yeah found the cure. superdrive burned out. had to fit new superdrive. £140 later burn cds again. thanks apple tech support!!! useless chutney ferrets. just 2 weeks out of warranty.