"we'll be bringing you some amazing fun to liven up that Mac of yours! Next on the list are Max Payne, Myth III, and Stronghold, with even more games to be announced later this year ."

Hopefully the Max Payne FAQ is just not up-to-date and there's been no change in plans from MacSoft. (Update: Readers say the MacSoft announcement was made after the MaxPayne FAQ was written and it has not been updated.)

"I Just got done testing the Pioneer DVR-A03 Drive in my G4 450DP and I thought you might like to know how it went. After replacing the built in DVD The Machine booted normaly. IDVD 1.0 does indeed work act and operate like it should ( as if it were the actual superdrive) with no problems. I did raise the memory allocation. I did burn one $10.00 coaster after forgetting to turn off everything in the energy controll panel.

Disc burner fine works fine too. Toast Titanium works fine except when I tried to burn a 4.5 gig DVD Rom I got serious buffer underuns. Making a disk image first helped

I played back 2 DVDs I made using Imovie and IDVD at the local Circuit City and 7 out of 10 of the players ran it fine. (The Phillips Units had problems) let me know if you need more info Dean "

I noted in the news some time back that Roxio has a note on a problem with Toast 5 and the DVR drive. Roxio does not list it in the FAQ, but searching the knowledge base there for "superdrive" found it.

" After burning or simulating a burn of DVD-R or DVD-RW media with the Pioneer DVR-A03 (the Apple SuperDrive), Toast 5.0.1 is left in an inconsistent state. This causes any subsequent burn or simulation to fail with a Buffer Underrun, during the setup phase. No actual data is written to the media.
The workarounds are:
1) Have Toast rescan for new recorders (double-click the recorder info line at the bottom of the main window).
2) Quit and relaunch Toast. "

" Think DVD http://web.tiscali.it/thinkdifferent/ has a new patch web.tiscali.it/thinkdifferent/english/patchs/appledvdpatch27.html to use on the new 2.7 Apple DVD player.
It worked fine with my Creative EIDE internal 12X DVD drive.
Night Rider "

This is the same site linked in the DVD section of the FAQ.

IDE Toshiba SD-R1102 8x8x8x32, Beige G3 running OS 9.1.
Comments:
" First, I'm going to say this is a lovely drive!
Here is a quick summary:

Toast 5 Platnium - burns OK
Itunes/Disc Burner - does not recognize the drive
CD Boot - boots everything with "C" key except OS X CD
Audio CD - does not recognize audio CDs
Apple DVD Player 2.7 - plays perfectly with 2.7 patch!
CD/DVD Speedtools 5.7 driver - burn OK, but DVD playback stutter, no Audio CD recognition
Toast CD Reader 5 extension - burn OK, no Audio CD recognition
Apple's CD/DVD Driver - works flawlessly with everything (except iTunes/Disc Burner)

The summary:
The first thing I did was to try and burn a CD with a system folder on it. My system folder was about 300MB so I chose this. Burning to my CDRW disk took 8:15 at 8X (kinda long don't you think?)

Itunes/Disc Burner I couldn't get to work. The finder does notice I put a CDRW disk in and asks what format to use but as soon as I want to burn it Disc Burner complains that the drive is unsupported. I could be doing something wrong with editing the ToshibaCDR authoring support file but I don't think so. Somewhat of a pain is that using either of the three drivers (Apple's stock, CD/DVD 5.7, Toast CD) yielded no results with any audio CDs I threw at it. It simply wanted to format the disks when inserted.

Very nice is that it boots using the "C" key without problems but of course the exception of the OS X install CD.
The new Apple DVD player 2.7 works too with the patch. I watched about 15 minutes of Galaxy Quest. No stutter here. Smooth as silk. Except if you try to do another task.

Fits of course with the stock Beige G3 bezel and button works to eject disks. Super quiet drive compared to the stock drive. Smooth and quiet eject mechanism.

Pros: Works with most all things with Apple's stock CD/DVD driver extension. Reads 32x, writes 8x, rewrites 8x, reads DVD 8x. Fast disk mounts.

Cons: Couldn't get Audio CDs and iTunes/CD Burner to work. Somewhat slow burn times.

My Platform:
Beige G3 - G3/466MHz 66MHz Bus
512MB Ram
ATTO Express PSC UW SCSI Card
9 GB Seagate Barracuda as startup disk
18 GB Seagate Cheetah as extra disk
ATI Radeon PCI Video Card

I forgot to mention with the SD-R1102 that the drive has buffer underrun protection! "

• Newer Tech G4/400 in Beige G3 (rated 8)
• Other World Computing G3/500 ZIF in Beige G3 (rated 10)
• Sonnet G3/400 in 8500 (rated 9)
• Sonnet G4/500 in B&W G3 (rated 10)
• XLR8 G4/450 ZIF in Beige G3 DT (rated 10)
• OEM G3/333 ZIF in Beige G3
  (filed under Apple brand as it was a OEM ZIF from a Mac)

You can find these full reports by searching the database selecting the indicated Mac model and upgrade card brand/type. If you've upgraded the CPU on your Mac, please post an entry in the database. Search the database for entries from most every upgradable Mac model *before* you buy. (Searchable by mac model/upgrade brand). For detailed reviews with performance tests and install tips, see the CPU Upgrades page.)

Software Updates:

• Netscape 6.1 Pr1
• Graphic Converter 4.0.8
• Content Barrier 1.2.1
• Novell Native File Access
• Nomad Jukebox 2.90 & Nomad II MG 2.0.3
• Nikon Scan 3 (Ver.3.1) Update
• CarbonLib 1.4 SDK
  
  OS X Software
• AOL 5D
• iClean 4.0
• Dock-it 0.1

Apple TIL Updates: (Very light today)
• Mac OS 9.1: Services Location Protocol (SLP) Changes
• AirPort: Configuring a Base Station With a Non-AirPort-Capable Computer

Mac News:
(Note: Rehashing of press releases, repeated news, etc. not listed)

• Mac OS Web Server Handbook [Book]
• Saudi Arabia donor provides disabled user with free touch screen iMac (macevangelist)
• My Old Flame: The Macintosh (fortune)
• The Basics - Editing with Transitions in Final Cut Pro (kenstone)
• New Ways to Roam the Web, Mac-Style (businessweek)
• Do Clones Make The Mac? (zdnet)
• The Great CEO Pay Heist (fortune)
• 90% Windows, 5% Mac, 5% Linux? Not true! (the register)
• Apple may issue profit warning - analyst (the register)
• Apple's New iBook Finds The Way to Your Heart (newsday)
• Timbuktu - There's no such place as far away (apple)
• Jobs to give education keynote (macworld uk)
• Apple Final Cut Pro 2.0 (creative mac)
• Mac OS X: How do I disable the shutdown and restart buttons on the login screen? (mactipscafe)
• Joy Of Tech [LOL] (joy of tech)
• AppleScript in a Nutshell (orielly)

Gaming:
• Max Payne (godgames)
  [Nice flash animation but if you don't have Flash5 installed, use this link.

Misc Hardware Related:
• DVIator [DVI to ADC adapter] (DrBott)
• Princeton Ai3.2HD 32" TV set is the first and only television to offer convergence of television, HDTV capability, computer monitor resolution and integrated web access (princeton)
• Athlon closes the gap: Why Pentium no longer rules the roost (zdnet)
• Rambus plots fivefold expansion in RDRAM bandwidth (the register)