impression operations manual

previous

Previous Page

table of contents

Table of Contents

next

Next Page


Determining if your optical drive is supported for writing to CD or DVD under Impression

This document is divided into the following sections:


Instructions

On the web, one can consult a list of third-party drives supported by Apple under OS X, which is available here. To conclusively know whether or not your drive (and the firmware version) is supported, you can use the following methods:

    Under OS X 10.4.x: Use the System Profiler application (likely located in your /Applications/Utilities folder) and look within the 'Hardware' item to find the 'Disc Burning' item. Look in the listing of the devices for your optical drive, and verify that the 'Burn Support' entry reads 'Yes'.
    Under OS X 10.3.x: Use the System Profiler application (likely located in your /Applications/Utilities folder) and look within the 'Hardware' item to find the 'ATA' or 'SCSI' item (depending on wether your drive is connected to the ATA or SCSI bus - if you don't know, it's likely connected to the ATA bus). Look in the listing of ATA/SCSI devices for your optical drive. Click on your drive name to reveal the full information list for that device, and verify that the 'Disc Burning' entry reads 'Apple Supported'.

If your drive isn't supported, it will be revealed under the (Apple) System Profiler with an indication to that effect.


Troubleshooting

Since Apple provides Impression with the drivers it uses to burn discs, I regrettably cannot add drivers to Impression for non-supported drives myself. Impression is dependent on Apple for this functionality.

Some folks have reported that the 'PatchBurn' utility under Mac OS X 10.3.x has been useful in getting non-supported drives to work with Impression. Use at your own risk!

ImpsAnswer 009, last modified: 2006.02.06


© Copyright 1998-2006 Stephen W. Elliott, All rights reserved.