Greg In The Desert

Wow, I’m really ruining my reputation as a Apple Fan Boy and early adopter. I didn’t buy the first iPhone when it first came out (instead waited for the 16GB version) and I haven’t purchased a iPhone 3G. I had no desire to stand in line for one on launch day. I’m not really a people person and I’m not interested in socializing with strangers.

I did look into it last week. The Albuqueruque Apple Store was out and while I was in Portland for a few days, all three of those stores were out.

I can live with the EDGE network speeds. The killer feature for me is the GPS. Since there are no real GPS realtime navigation software out for the iPhone, yet, I think I will hold out. If I hold out long enough a 32GB version might be available.

I had a lot of fun trying to burn a DVD with iDVD this weekend. I say “a lot of fun” when I really mean frustration and the desire to throw my computer out the window. It’s the first time I had tried to burn a DVD since upgrading to Panther, having previously burned several DVDs in Jaguar with no problems.

The most fun error messages are the cryptic ones. “Power Calibration area error. (0×73, 0×03.)” is very useful. So it’s off to troubleshoot. I first went to the Apple discussion boards and did a search for the error. I found a thread where several users had reported that their drives were replaced for this error, indicating a problem with the drives themselves. But a few people had taken theirs apart and cleaned it and it worked fine. Since My Powerbook is out of warranty (conveniently in November) and I know it’s full of dust bunnies, it was time to take it apart.

The last laptop I took apart with my 500mhz iBook. The Powerbook was a cake walk in comparison as I just needed to remove the screws in the bottom and it basicly came apart. In case your wondering I took apart the iBook to overclock it, and in the process of removing the wrong jumpers I killed the modem and the sound (to get a whopping 50Mhz). Which prompted me to buy the Powerbook. When taking apart the Powerbook my Girlfriend reminded me that I cannot afford a new computer right now. The Powerbook was pretty dirty within which I was able to clean up pretty well. I removed the superdrive module and blew it out. But heading the warning from my Girlfriend I decided not to actually dissemble that part. I put it all back together and viola, same error.

Trolling the web for more answers I found this somewhat more helpfull suggestion: “Hi there, I had\have the same problems and all this seems to be ONLY the blank media problem.As you well know, disks themselves have written Media ID code there is information that the drive uses to calibrate itself to the disk. When burning starts, a small amount of data is writen to a calibration area on the disc, using the calibration information in the Media ID code, and then try to read back the data that it has written. If it cannot be read, then disk will be ejected and we get a power calibration error:( So, what else to do…try another media, don`t blame the burner… Hope this info helps:)”

OK, but my error was happening on Apple and non Apple branded DVDs. There was likely one more culprit: The firmware upgrade. I had installed an unofficial firmware upgrade on the Powerbook that enabled DVD+RW and faster burning speeds. So after a bit of searching I figured out which downgrader I needed. Installed it and rebooted.

The non Apple DVD’s still give that error but the Apple brands burn fine. Meaning that something must have changed either with the new iDVD or Panther or both that makes it more finicky about brands.