Dear Sir/Madam: I have a dual boot G4 (Mac OS + Mandrake 8.2) I have a ATAPI Panasonic DVD-RAM in a Macintosh and read this article... The link at the bottom of the article does not work at this time and it looks as though Mr. Laredo has moved on. Could you please tell me where I can find this diver. Two additional questions- 1.) Does the drive work on a PowerPC? 2.) Can it support an ATAPI vs. a SCSI. Thank you for your attention. Sincerely, Hans Jueng ***** WHAT'S NEW: Press Releases Panasonic Announces Linux Support for Rewritable DVD-RAM DRIVE MILPITAS, CA (August 10, 1999) - Panasonic Industrial Company announced today the availability of Linux support for the LF-D101 rewritable DVD-RAM drive. In making the announcement, Panasonic officials credited Linux community member, Nathan Laredo, for developing the DVD-RAM Linux driver and making it available to millions of users worldwide at no cost. The driver can be downloaded from http://mpeg.openprojects.net/panasonic.html. With driver support for the Panasonic DVD-RAM drive, Linux users can store large files on 5.2GB removable media and perform system backups for less than a penny per Megabyte. The same DVD-RAM drive can be used to read CDs. Linux is a free, UNIX-like operating system that is gaining widespread recognition for its stability, speed, and ease of use. Analysts at International Data Corporation report that Linux has more than 10 million users and accounted for more than 17 percent of all computer server operating system shipments last year. The growing popularity of this open-source operating system is also driving the demand for productivity, office, and financial packages, as well as image manipulation and audio applications. To help Linux users meet their storage and backup requirements, Laredo developed Linux driver support for the DVD-RAM drive. According to Laredo, developing the driver for the Panasonic DVD-RAM drive was easy. "The documentation I received for the drive was impressive," he noted, "and the amount of work required to support the drive itself was almost insignificant." The Linux driver treats DVD-RAM media like any other removable hard drive media, allowing users to treat the DVD-RAM drive just as they would any other hard drive in Linux. With support for the DVD-RAM drive Linux users can write and overwrite DVD-RAM media and can read from discs currently accepted by CD-ROM, CD Audio, CD-R, CD-RW and video CD drives, as well as DVD video, DVD-ROM and DVD-R drives. "We were a little surprised when the Linux driver was first posted on the Linux open projects site," said Jeff Saake, Group General Manager, Panasonic Industrial Co., Computer Technology Group. "Suddenly, we were getting emails from around the globe thanking us for supporting Linux. We received about 8,000 emails from Linux users who are very interested in adding DVD-RAM drives to their systems, and that's a conservative estimate," he emphasized. With a transfer rate of up to 10.5Mbps, the Panasonic DVD-RAM drive speeds the recording process. Performance is further enhanced by the drive's 2MB buffer which prevents data interruptions, even when other tasks are run in the background. DVD-RAM media is available in 2.6GB and 5.2GB (double-sided) capacities (about 8 times the capacity of a CD-R/RW disc). With a storage cost of about $.008/MB and more than 100,000 write/rewrite cycles, the DVD-RAM discs are also significantly more cost-effective than CD-RW media which only provides 1,000 write/rewrite cycles. Because DVD-RAM is a physically addressed medium, users can move to specific segments of the disc to modify their work. Data can be written to any location on the disc and small sections of data can be rewritten without stressing the error correction codes. Pricing, Availability The Linux driver for Panasonic's LF-D101 DVD-RAM drive is available free The Linux driver for Panasonic's LF-D101 DVD-RAM drive is available free of charge and can be downloaded from here." *****

I'm reasonably certain that drive is very similar, if not identical, to the drives that Apple shipped in its G4s that had DVD-RAM installed at the factory. So yes, it should work. I'm sure the interface is a choice you have to make when you buy the drive, so if your G4 has SCSI, you'll probably want to get the SCSI version. p