ibook superdrive

[the_snitch]

ok, so all i want is the ability to burn DVDs from my ibook. im not interested in upgrading to a powerbook (loss in battery life, airport reception etc.)

I noticed someone on eBay (str8artist) selling ibooks preinstalled with Dvd burners - they are better than the standard apple superdrives as they burn to dvd+R and -R and -RAM.
So i asked him if he could sell me one. Heres what he said:

Unfortunately, I cannot help you because I program the drives and software to work directly with each other. That means that I would have to upgrade your iBook personally to get it to function properly to my specs. And since I prefer not to upgrade a system with an unknown history, I am really trying to avoid it altogether for liability reasons. If you really want to upgrade, I really think that you should find another alternative. MCE carries the drive you may want.

Go to:

http://www.mcetech.com/sdpbg4.html

Hope this has been of some help! - str8artist

So does anyone know of the correct "Software mod" that is required to activate these drives? I would really love one of these in my ibook :D

[Luca]

Well, technically laptops and desktops are really no different. If you took any Mac (even a laptop) and swapped out its optical drive with a different Mac-supported optical drive, it should work right off the bat. But you'll void your warranty.

Anyway, MCE provides a $250 upgrade service for iBook G4 owners here (http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=IBOOKSLDVDR4-A&Category_Code=SVCIBWHT&Product_Count=0). Normally, MCE overcharges for their products, and this is not an exception. You can buy a Toshiba laptop 4x DVD burner for about $120 here (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-130-026&depa=1), but you'd have to replace it yourself and void the warranty in the process, and you'd also have to use Patchburn II to get support for the drive. If you were to buy the $250 MCE upgrade, you'd get a fully supported (no hacks) drive, it would be installed for you and you wouldn't void your warranty. Up to you, I guess.

[the_snitch]

the toshiba drive is a tray drive, is there any slot-load drives that are compatible or hacked, as i have an ibook g4 with the slot-loading mechanism. Thanks for the help.
If it ends up being too much, i might just buy an external drive. What are your recomendations there? I have a pioneer dvr-107d in my pc, seems to work ok.

[the_snitch]

This one?
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=27-133-004&DEPA=1

[Luca]

If you want an external, the DVR-107 is perfect. You could buy a new DVD burner for your PC and use the DVR-107 in an external Firewire case with your iBook. Then again, why would you need a DVD burner in both your computers?

I have an idea - get an external case for your DVR-107, then use some other optical drive as the internal one for your PC, and you'll be able to connect the DVD burner to either the iBook or the PC. You can either get a dual-interface case that has both Firewire and USB 2, or you can just get a cheaper USB 2-only case and use it with both if your iBook has USB 2 (the G4s do).

[Luca]

This one?
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=27-133-004&DEPA=1
Ooh, that one should work! XLR8 Your Mac lists it as supported if you install Patchburn.

[the_snitch]

I have an idea - get an external case for your DVR-107, then use some other optical drive as the internal one for your PC, and you'll be able to connect the DVD burner to either the iBook or the PC. You can either get a dual-interface case that has both Firewire and USB 2, or you can just get a cheaper USB 2-only case and use it with both if your iBook has USB 2 (the G4s do).

Whats the advantage of a firewire Optical drive over USB2. I know firewire is faster for hdds etc, but when you are dealing with optical drive speeds i wouldn't have thought it was an issue.
I bought a usb 3.5" HDD case (firewire was 3 times as expensive!) and then found out you cant boot from a usb 2 drive. Is this a mac osX limitation that may be updated in future OS's? Is it the same for an Optical drive then?

Also, will the DVR-107 work natively in 10.3.5 with no patchburn? I heard iDVD cannot burn to external drives, without patchburn. :confused:

[Luca]

In Apple's Power Mac G4s (not sure about the G5s), the optical drives are put on an ATA/33 bus. It's fast enough to handle an optical drive. Even reading or writing a DVD at 16x only requires 21 MB per second, which is less than half the bandwidth of either USB 2 or Firewire.

So yeah, USB 2 won't let you boot from the DVD drive, but it will easily handle the bandwidth of a DVD burner. And I believe that 10.3.3 or 10.3.4 was the first version of OS X to work with the DVR-107 natively, with no Patchburn. The new DVR-108 isn't supported yet, but it should be added in the next update.