Mac refuses to play CDs - DVDs work?

[jannikmeissner]

A friend of mine asked me for help and I am also rather clueless; When he puts in a DVD it starts fine, but putting in any music CD results in no reaction whatsoever: In iTunes the CD isn't displayed, it won't show up on the desktop and there is no entry for it in the Finder; Again, with a DVD this all works fine in the same disk drive. Furthermore, using an external USB drive yields the exact same results;

Did anyone experience anything similar?

 

[jerwin]

which dvd drive?

 

[jannikmeissner]

It is the Pioneer Superdrive in a Mac Pro 1,1 running Pike's El Capitan Fix.

 

[Fishrrman]

Are the CD's he's trying to play "home burned", or are they commercially-pressed?

Will his CD's play on YOUR Mac?
If you give him one of YOUR CD's, will it open on HIS Mac?

 

[jannikmeissner]

They are commercially pressed CDs that are known good and work in CD players, other Macs and even the same Mac a few days ago before performing a fresh install of OS X

 

[Fishrrman]

"They are commercially pressed CDs that are known good and work in CD players, other Macs and even the same Mac a few days ago before performing a fresh install of OS X"

I'm wondering if there's a "kext" file that loads during boot that enables the OS to "see" CD's and mount them.

"It is the Pioneer Superdrive in a Mac Pro 1,1 running Pike's El Capitan Fix."

Hmmm... that may have something to do with it.
Could be a "fix" that fixes some things, while breaking others...

 

[NoBoMac]

"running Pike's El Capitan Fix."

Hmmm... that may have something to do with it.
Could be a "fix" that fixes some things, while breaking others...

Not familiar with Pike's El Capitan fix, but back in the day when I had a Hackintosh, it was a system that needed to be handled with care. For example, only way you wanted to update the software was via download and install of the combo update(s) from Apple's website. And even then there was a bunch of things to do before and after any update. Not as much as a pain as doing a fresh install, but was still not turnkey. And seemed like each update broke something: if could live with what became broken, kept at it.

Personally, would not have done the clean install that OP mentions, for above reasons. Might have missed a step in the process for install that a pseudo-Hackintosh requires. Or wiped some legacy kext that was needed. Or the install source has a piece of code (read: update) that should not be applied. Or, the install media is some image that was obtained online and is not quite compatible with a Mac Pro in an unsupported configuration (would see this on the Hackintosh boards: "I downloaded install media from some website, and now my Hackintosh refuses to boot, get the international "no" logo").

ADD: might get better repsonses by posting the question to the unsupported Mac thread(s) on the El Cap sub-board (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/)

 

[jannikmeissner]

"They are commercially pressed CDs that are known good and work in CD players, other Macs and even the same Mac a few days ago before performing a fresh install of OS X"

I'm wondering if there's a "kext" file that loads during boot that enables the OS to "see" CD's and mount them.

"It is the Pioneer Superdrive in a Mac Pro 1,1 running Pike's El Capitan Fix."

Hmmm... that may have something to do with it.
Could be a "fix" that fixes some things, while breaking others...

It used to run until the day before my post. All it does is replace the boot.efi with one parsing 64-bit commands to the 32 bit EFI that is running on those otherwise 64-Bit Mac Pros. So far I never saw such an issue with it and I know a few people running those older Mac Pros like this.