Flashing My Superdrive

[Little Endian]

I got my dual 2.5Ghz G5 last month and unfortunately it did not ship with the Pioneer 108AA drive, instead I got a SONY DVD RW DW-U21A drive which is a rebadged Liteon Burner. However both drives are actually 16X DVD burners with Dual Layer Burn abilities that been dumbed down by Apple Firmware.

More info here.
http://www.hardmac.com/article.php?id=44

My problem is the Rebadged Sony Liteon Drive does not have a mac based Utility to do this. I cannot Do firmware upgrades with VPC either as it does not directly interface with the drive. VPC sees virtualized Disk drives only though I understand that if I were to put my drive in a USB box I could flash with VPC but I do not own one and don't wanna buy one.

My only option right now is to find someone with a Desktop PC and stick my drive in there to flash. Does anyone know of a better way to do this. Has Anyone flashed their Dumbed down Pioneer or Sony Drives?

It boggles my mind why Apple is doing this as these drives are perfectly capable of DL abilities and burn much faster all around. The oh because the ilife apps can't support it etc etc. excuses are bull as it does not take much for them to support it and we have ilife 05 and still no support.

I have a theory that Apple is nervous or at least likes to shy away these days from Optical drive advancements. I think Steve is worried about people being able to copy DVD movies in uncompressed format with DL abilities and is trying to at least slow the situation by delaying Dual Layer Drives shipping as standard on the Macs.

Apple is also shy on fully commiting itself to upcoming BlueRay or HD DVD media formats. I also remember reading an article once in where Steve Jobs said that he did not think Macs with HD or Blue ray Burners should be made available. Sure Apple is Gungho about HD support for editing and Viewing however with burning Apple does not want to move forward. I think Steve is letting his Pixar ties conflict with the advancement of technology on the Mac platform. Sure it's a far fetched theory but hey something is deffinitely up as even the newly released Powerbooks are actually shipping with dumbed down drives that actually do have DL abilities on the Hardware level.

 

[varmit]

I got my dual 2.5Ghz G5 last month and unfortunately it did not ship with the Pioneer 108AA drive, instead I got a SONY DVD RW DW-U21A drive which is a rebadged Liteon Burner. However both drives are actually 16X DVD burners with Dual Layer Burn abilities that been dumbed down by Apple Firmware.

More info here.
http://www.hardmac.com/article.php?id=44

My problem is the Rebadged Sony Liteon Drive does not have a mac based Utility to do this. I cannot Do firmware upgrades with VPC either as it does not directly interface with the drive. VPC sees virtualized Disk drives only though I understand that if I were to put my drive in a USB box I could flash with VPC but I do not own one and don't wanna buy one.

My only option right now is to find someone with a Desktop PC and stick my drive in there to flash. Does anyone know of a better way to do this. Has Anyone flashed their Dumbed down Pioneer or Sony Drives?

It boggles my mind why Apple is doing this as these drives are perfectly capable of DL abilities and burn much faster all around. The oh because the ilife apps can't support it etc etc. excuses are bull as it does not take much for them to support it and we have ilife 05 and still no support.

I have a theory that Apple is nervous or at least likes to shy away these days from Optical drive advancements. I think Steve is worried about people being able to copy DVD movies in uncompressed format with DL abilities and is trying to at least slow the situation by delaying Dual Layer Drives shipping as standard on the Macs.

Apple is also shy on fully commiting itself to upcoming BlueRay or HD DVD media formats. I also remember reading an article once in where Steve Jobs said that he did not think Macs with HD or Blue ray Burners should be made available. Sure Apple is Gungho about HD support for editing and Viewing however with burning Apple does not want to move forward. I think Steve is letting his Pixar ties conflict with the advancement of technology on the Mac platform. Sure it's a far fetched theory but hey something is deffinitely up as even the newly released Powerbooks are actually shipping with dumbed down drives that actually do have DL abilities on the Hardware level.

I think the best way to do this is to do it the way someone else has already done it. That means taking it out of the Mac and putting it into a PC to be flash upgraded. Using VPC could cause major problems since OS X would be already booted, and then would suddenly have its hardware changed, don't know if it would hold up or crash. Or if VPC would even see it as the correct drive in Windows. I would say its not worth the chance to try something new if you are not a hardware tester and have the money to burn on getting it replaced.

 

[Jo-Kun]

I did flash my 8x Pioneer Superdrive trough mac... so now I can select any bruning speed available, not limited to the certified speeds of the disks... and it should make it regio free but since I don't watch DVD's on my G5... thats not something I need/use...

since you can't flash trough mac/vpc the only option is to do it with a PC... I guess you have friends who use PC?? and I guess its not such a big risk... if you do it on a stable system wich will not hang/crash during the flash process or the drive will bie fried... but who am I to say... be carefull anyway

 

[simie]

You must be aware modding the firmware in your superdrive may void your warranty.

With the cheap price of DVD writers why not get another writer and unlock that and keep your original superdrive somewhere safe.

 

[Jo-Kun]

You must be aware modding the firmware in your superdrive may void your warranty.

well my experience tells me that all my machines get hardware problems when warranty is allready expired so I don't worry... if my superdrive will break down I will replace it myself and not go to an apple tech to do it for me...

but thats just me talking

you decide all for yourself so do you need that warranty or not

J

 

[Little Endian]

I think I will just hold off on flashing my drive for now. Perhpaps Apple will put out a firmware update but I find that highly unlikely or I could wait until some individual hacks the firmware and makes an installer for OSX. I suppose I can live without DL now and though faster burn speeds would be nice I would prefer to keep my warranty for at least the time being.

 

[Sweetfeld28]

I say your safeest bet is to pull out yopur drive, and install it in a PC. I know it is a pain because i have done it many times with my Pioneer DVR-107D drive.

Last time i posted something like this, i was told there is a program that will let you do it on the Mac, but the person that told me about it said they weren't sure how safe it is; so i didn't end up using it.

But like i said, your best bet is to do it in a PC.
good luck

 

[Platform]

I say your safeest bet is to pull out yopur drive, and install it in a PC. I know it is a pain because i have done it many times with my Pioneer DVR-107D drive.

Last time i posted something like this, i was told there is a program that will let you do it on the Mac, but the person that told me about it said they weren't sure how safe it is; so i didn't end up using it.

But like i said, your best bet is to do it in a PC.
good luck

Can I ask you how you do it on the PC (excuse my question don't know that much about stuff like that)

 

[Sweetfeld28]

Its really simple. Take you drive out of your computer, then install it in the PC. Turn the PC on make sure it can see the drive. Then download, or run the firmware updater file from a floppy, or from the computer desktop. It will give you a warning telling you that it might void your drives warrenty, and to not shutdown, or play with the computer, while it is running the firmware upgrade program. If you happen to shut-off the computer or get a power failure, it will currupt your drive. Thus, make the drive unuseable.

Once done, it should prompt you. Then after the upgrade is done, shutdown the computer. Then, take the drive back out of the PC, and reinstall it back into your Mac.