On 29 Nov 2004 09:43:20 -0800,
(Paul) wrote:

snip

The LED goes from
purple to blinking blue stops blinking, then blinks again before
returning to purple. Steady purple LED signifies an empty drive.
Blinking blue signals a read. Solid blue means a disk is inserted.
That's what the LED should be when the drive has a disk in it. The
drive is not even getting that far regardless of what is happening on
the computer. It goes from blinking blue to solid purple. That
should be independent of OS, drivers or anything on the computer I
would think?

I'm pretty much getting ready to write it off and buy a DVD burner.
The thing that gets me is the drive worked great for two years. I've
been running it on the same machine the whole time. I reinstalled the
OS once but the drive always worked well.

Yes it does seem to be a drive problem, and while the old K6
box isn't the ideal alternate test-bed, it does also sway
odds to being a drive problem as further evidenced by the
LED signaling fail to read. 2 years for some of the
nearly-free-after-rebate drives isn't too bad, though you
probably paid a pretty penny for the Yamaha? You might be
another CDRW too if you have a spare bay, just to extend the
life of the more-expensive DVD burner when it's not needed.