I have an iMac G3/333 which needs to have the tray CD-Rom drive replaced. I noticed that the existing drive is a CRN-8241B which was used in many laptops and is easily found on eBay and elsewhere. I find the Apple drives to be relatively expensive, so is it possible to use a standard CRN-8241B and get it to be "bootable", or is there some actual hardware difference that would make this idea impractical? Anyone out there already try this?
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the drives are physically the same as any laptop or PC drive. I've been using a Panasonic slot-loading slimline drive with my Beige G3 mobo, and it worked right off the bat (not including JAE-50 pin reversals, and that whack proprietary 50-pin IDE adapter). Hard drives, on the other hand...
One neat feature of Macs as opposed to PCs is that you don't have to set Master/Slave pins to make a drive bootable: any drive will boot an OS.
Also, lowendmac.com has some links to upgrading iMacs. Considering how cheap some drives are on eBay, I'd say just go for it
Thank you very much for the information especially since it is based on your own experience. From what you state I gather that once I get a replacement CD-Rom drive I'll need to transfer the IDE adapter from the existing drive onto the new one and make sure the pins are oriented properly for it to work. Given the significant price difference (and the fun of the challenge) I think I will give it a try.