Hey everyone, I searched and saw a lot of posts on this subject but nobody who actually tried it on the newest iMacs. I decided to give it a go and sacrifice my machine. My iMac came with the AD-5680H which has Riplock.
For anyone who doesn't know, Riplock prevents the drive from reading at full speed with dvd video discs. This is partially to prevent the drive from being noisy, but also to make it slower to rip dvds to your hard drive. The problem is, there are many legit reasons to want to rip a dvd. In my case this is so that I can keep them in the case on the shelf while watching them on the Apple TV downstairs (we don't even have a dvd player in the living room). Other uses are to conserve battery life when watching on a laptop. Lastly, for anyone with a MacBook air it is really one of the only ways to watch a movie you already own.
Remember that if you decide to do this you can certainly mess things up. I am not sure how bad or how difficult it would be to fix, but please keep this in mind.
-I started by booting into Windows 7 and downloading the Binflash win64 gui. You can google Binflash and download whichever version is appropriate for you.
-Next you will need to download the new firmware, in my case I picked the "fast" version. The firmware can be downloaded from here http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/page/en/Optiarc-AD-5680H/
-After doing this you want to follow the simple instructions on the page where you downloaded the firmware (bottom left "flashing tutorial"), please remember to dump your old firmware and save it.
Thats it... here are some times to rip my Rocky Balboa DVD:
Superdrive before firmware flash: 48 min
Superdrive after firmware flash: 17 min
External USB drive (LG i believe): 12 min
As you can see there is quite a nice little decrease in time. These times aren't scientific, I was browsing and stuff while they were running but you get the idea.
For anyone who doesn't know, Riplock prevents the drive from reading at full speed with dvd video discs. This is partially to prevent the drive from being noisy, but also to make it slower to rip dvds to your hard drive. The problem is, there are many legit reasons to want to rip a dvd. In my case this is so that I can keep them in the case on the shelf while watching them on the Apple TV downstairs (we don't even have a dvd player in the living room). Other uses are to conserve battery life when watching on a laptop. Lastly, for anyone with a MacBook air it is really one of the only ways to watch a movie you already own.
Remember that if you decide to do this you can certainly mess things up. I am not sure how bad or how difficult it would be to fix, but please keep this in mind.
-I started by booting into Windows 7 and downloading the Binflash win64 gui. You can google Binflash and download whichever version is appropriate for you.
-Next you will need to download the new firmware, in my case I picked the "fast" version. The firmware can be downloaded from here http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/page/en/Optiarc-AD-5680H/
-After doing this you want to follow the simple instructions on the page where you downloaded the firmware (bottom left "flashing tutorial"), please remember to dump your old firmware and save it.
Thats it... here are some times to rip my Rocky Balboa DVD:
Superdrive before firmware flash: 48 min
Superdrive after firmware flash: 17 min
External USB drive (LG i believe): 12 min
As you can see there is quite a nice little decrease in time. These times aren't scientific, I was browsing and stuff while they were running but you get the idea.
