A reader recently asked if he could put a SuperDrive (a Pioneer DVD-R DVD recorder) in his Blue & White Power Mac G3. I answered in the affirmative, with these provisions:
If you hope to use iDVD you must upgrade the processor to a G4. Also, some of the these drives go to sleep and when they awaken, your Mac running Mac OS X can panic. Kristofer Szymanski’s $10 Cocktail includes a setting that keeps all your Mac’s drives from sleeping (unlike Energy Saver, which keeps only hard drives from going to sleep).
To read the real life tales of those who’ve upgraded their Macs with DVD burners, visit xlr8yourmac.com — specifically its Drive Compatibility Database. When you visit this page enter DVD-R DVD Recorder in the Select a Drive Type pop-up menu, Pioneer in the Drive Brand pop-up menu, choose the Mac model you’d like to upgrade in the Mac Model pop-up menu, and click the Search button.