Ok, well, back to this...

Two months on and I'm still using my "temporary" solution at work, which is fine with me. But for my PowerMac at home, I'm ready to stick in a couple of 1TB drives and install 10.5, and I'm still getting errors from the drive. To be sure, they seem to have gone away for awhile, leading me to think things were Ok, but within the past week, I've been getting kernel panics again.

I'm guessing this won't bode well for installing the OS (I'll try anyway), so I'm just going to sell this thing on Craigslist.

I'm just posting to get suggestions for a drive that's known to work with a PowerMac G5. The cheapest one that will burn DVDs.

Sorry, should have got back on this. I'm not sure why that 118 isn't working for you. I put that "troublesome" 118 from above into my MDD and have burned all sorts of stuff with it over the last couple of months.

Remember I took that 118 out of their G5 and put in my 112? Well they started having the same problems with the 112. I was pulling my hair out as it was a drive that was supported and worked in my MDD. I went back in and looked at it. There was a loose IDE cable going from the DVD at the logic board connection, it's easy to come loose when you're installing it with the angle it's at.

If that 118 drive is working via firewire, it should work via IDE too. Check the cable. Do you have another machine to pull the optical drive from and put it into the G5 for testing?

As far as selling the PM, if you're having all those problems with it selling it isn't a good thing to do IMO. If another optical from a working machine doesn't work, then there is a serious problem with the PM and you probably shouldn't sell it. They'll be getting a POS and they'll probably come back on you for it.

No, I meant I was going to sell the drive. The PowerMac itself (both of them, actually) is fine.

The one at work is actually on a USB connection right now, and the original drive is back in and having no real problems, but I'll check the connections anyway.

Might try OWC's Samsung from your original link then.

Just to follow up... I hope I don't jinx myself here, but the drive has been fine so far on my PowerMac at home after going up to 10.5. I'm going to install it here at work later this week.

I jinxed myself. Got home and I was getting the kernel[0]: IOATAController device blocking bus. code. What a pisser.

So, I guess the moral here is that the PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-118L doesn't play nice with the PowerMac G5. For now, I've got an old Lacie FW LightScribe drive that I may remove from the case and put into the PowerMac. Or maybe I'll just get the Samsung. I'll let you know.

What does OWC have to say about it?
I replaced the original Pioneer (110?) with a 116 and have had no problems, but I burn a lot of discs and it might carp out some day. It would be nice to know if it can be replaced.
I'm keeping my G5 until it can no longer run current software, or I die. Whichever comes first.

Funny you ask. I actually called them yesterday to see what they would say. Of course, they say it works fine in all the systems they tested. I'm guessing, though, that they probably just stuck one in, burned a disc, and gave it a pass.

I wasn't trying to get anything out of them, it's been like several months since I bought the drives. I just wanted to point out that maybe they shouldn't be selling them for PM G5s.

The guy was very nice, and I emailed him a link to this thread so that he could see (or least get the impression ) that I'm not a moron. He says he'll "pass this along to our product manager so he can research it further." Fine, but I'm still stuck shelling out $40.00 on a new drive.