Will MacG4 read DVD+R with external firewire DVD drive?

[201flyer]

I would appreciate some help here. I'm new to the Mac world and much more fluent with PCs....

My Mac G4 (OS9.1) will only read DVD-R. I'd like it to read all the formats including DVD+R, -RW, +RW.

I have an external Addonics Pocket DVD with a firewire connection. The first time I plugged it into my G4 it could read +R, -R. A day later it will not mount any DVD I put into it, but continues to work perfectly with a PC laptop (so I'm assuming it isn't the DVD drive being damaged). This same drive attached to the Mac read CDs just fine. When I put in a DVD of any type it prompts with a message saying "this disc is unrecognizable by this computer. Do you wish to format it." This seems so odd because it was waorking for a while. (These same DVD-Rs will mount just fine in the built in DVD drive so it isn't the DVD itself.)

I tried updating the Mac (software, and bios flash) but still get the same result.

Am I missing a driver? Any ideas greatly appreciated!

[galactica]

if the drive supports both +r and -r natively, you will only experience the +r ability with Panther 10.3

you can "use" the drive still but not with any iApps and it can only be powered with Toast or another 3rd party software. But you wont be able to mount the disk unless you have 10.3

[201flyer]

Thanks for your answer!

By 3rd party software do you mean Adaptics free "UDF Volume Access"?

I just read about that possibility, and also found a "patch" that supposedly will allow Apple's DVD player to work with a DVD mounted by the Adaptic UDF. Have not tried any of this yet but I would appreciate your expert opinion before I waste a lot of time on a wild goose chase!

Thanks again!

[galactica]

By 3rd party software do you mean Adaptics free "UDF Volume Access"?

Im not familiar with that app, but what I mean is the only way to use the drive is to burn to a +r using a 3rd party software (such as toast)
but your ability to then use ie mount the disk is dependent upon your system.

10.3 added +r support so you would need to have panther to be able to actually mount the dvd, uless this UDF VOLUME ACCESS does something to make +r disks mount.

sorry, not familiar with that app.

[AntnyMD]

If you can even get the file to download, the link is ftp://ftp.roxio.com/roxio/cd_recording_software/mac/udf-vol-access-english-1.0.4.hqx

From what I read, which may be unreliable, this file is an OS 9 app/extension. In this case, UDF is "universal data format" and not "Universal Disk Format" which is the standard for DVD video and data.

[ZeroSix]

Upgrade to OS X. Your problems should go away.