Filed under: Hardware, Hacks, Tips and tricks, Mods, Mac Pro
Hack your Mac Pro SuperDrive for fun and profit
It's not uncommon for computer manufacturers to swap and switch out various components for similar or near-identical parts during a production run, and Apple has been known to partake in this practice in the past. That being said, occasionally a manufacturer will use a part which has a slightly higher build quality or performance than its counterpart in other machines and simply throttle down the performance of the superior part through firmware.Although some of the new Mac Pro towers ship with the familiar Pioneer DVR-111D optical drive, the majority of the systems contain the apparently non-existent Sony DW-D150A. I say non-existent because the ubergeeks over at HardMac noticed that DW-D150A isn't a recognized Sony model number. After some more thorough research, it came to light that the drives billed as Sony DW-D150A are in actuality NEC 4570 mechanisms. You're probably asking yourself right about now why on earth I'm going on about something as innocuous as differing model numbers, and in most cases, you'd be right to question my sanity. However, in this rare instance, I have reached through the haze of confusion that normally clouds my mind, and at least for now I have a firm grip on the real world. The significance is this:
The NEC 4570 kicks the pants off the Sony DW-D150A in almost all aspects of reading and writing, and has some extra features to boot.
Sony:
- DVD -/+R 16x
- DVD+R DL 8x
- DVD+RW 8x
- DVD-RW 6x
- CD-RW 32X
- CD-R 32X
NEC:
- DVD -/+R 16x
- DVD-R/ DL 8x
- DVD+RW 8x
- DVD-RW 6x
- DVD-RAM 5x
- CD-RW 32x
- CD-R 48x
Naturally, Apple has locked down the specifications of the NEC 4570 to keep things fair, but that doesn't mean we can't do a bit of hacking and regain all that sweet sweet performance. A few simple commands in the terminal, some pixie dust, and a little bit of luck, and you've got yourself one speedy optical drive.
Disclaimer, Disclaimer, Disclaimer: Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) this hack is totally unsupported by Apple, and there is no guarantee you won't brick your SuperDrive. Attempt at your own risk.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tony Barnhill said 4:20PM on 10-07-2006
All of that for just a faster CDR write? No thanks.
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Aaron Gyes said 5:10PM on 10-07-2006
Quite a bit faster CD-R burn, DVD-RAM support, region-free DVD playing.
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HS said 5:37PM on 10-07-2006
Kicks the pants off?
Maybe I'm missing something, but burning regular CD's and DVD-ram is not "almost all aspects" as far as I can tell..
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kajoob said 5:55PM on 10-07-2006
hey cut them some slack, they needed to post something and this is infinitely better than Rig of the Day
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Don Perreault said 7:21PM on 10-07-2006
I have dual internal Sony DW-D150A drives in my Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro, so I took the chance on one of the drives and it worked, woo hoo.
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thecompkid said 10:28PM on 10-07-2006
Who cares, who cares, who cares?
If I had a mac pro, I certainly wouldn't.
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meatmcguffin said 11:00PM on 10-07-2006
@tony
and DVD-RAM capability. Now if only i knew someone who uses DVD-RAM...
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bean said 12:00AM on 10-08-2006
The point is that the faster NEC ND-4570A firmware provides DVD-RAM and 3x faster copy speed than the Sony DW-D150A. If you ever backup DVD this can be a real time saver. Check out the copy tests in the AMUG Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Review in the Optical Drive section for speed details:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/intel/macpro/
Copying data from DVD at 3x faster than the stock Sony DW-D150A with a few key strokes in Terminal is very cool.
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moquiti said 2:06AM on 10-08-2006
Whoa, an NEC optical drive that's spec'd better than a non-existent Sony drive? I, I, I, um, I'm speechless!
If I thought it'd be of any consequence, I'd ask: "and what's your point?"
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Adrian vG said 5:17AM on 10-08-2006
Now to make the macbooks region free...
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Daniel said 1:03PM on 10-08-2006
/waits for people who claim to 'not care' about DVD-RAM
Those things are actually quite useful. No burning tools needed.
and DVD+-RW are unreliable as hell for packet writing
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JJServer said 2:33PM on 10-08-2006
Does anyone know how to do this on a MacBook Pro
i would really like to know how fast it will really burn
cheers
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Nicolas said 11:25AM on 10-10-2006
So - when the system software updates..... will i need a firmware update? and how do i go about doing a firmware update?
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Mooner said 5:54PM on 10-10-2006
I don't know about all this DVD-RAM business, but region-freeizing my drive was reason enough for me to try this one. All went well on the second of my 2 superdrives, but when I popped in a European disc I was still greeted with the old region-code warning (the flash did work though)! Would I have to flash em both to get true region-freedom? Bummer.
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M Hillyard said 4:51PM on 10-25-2006
If I want to add a second superdrive and buy an NEC5470A, will it work in the Mac Pro?
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Christer said 10:11AM on 11-23-2006
I own a Mac Pro and I am doing a project in DVD Studio Pro that requires burning on dual layer dvd's. I use Verbatim DVD-R DL discs, since I have learned that DVD-R discs are the most compatible ones.
When I tried to burn in DVDSP I got the message "No disc was found in the drive".
After a little bit of research I found out that the burner in Mac Pro only accepted DVD+R DL discs.
So, after the searching the web I found this method of upgrading the DVD burner in my Mac and, lo and behold, now it works! No error message in DVDSP, and instead I have a perfectly playable DVD to send to my client, hurrah!
Christer
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Christer said 4:19AM on 11-30-2006
Hi again
This is an update to my previously added comment above:
although the firmware update gave the benefit of the ability to burn DVD-R DL discs, it sadly also cause a couple of bugs.
The update caused problem to unmount the discs from the desktop, whether I was using the keyboard or doing it from within any program, i e iTunes.
There was also problems with shutting down the computer. It hanged on the spinning wheel.
It also sometimes caused the programs to hang when quitting.
My advice is therefor, don't do this update.
For those of you who have already done this, and don't have the old firmware, it is available for download on this adress:
http://87.227.32.63/~Christer/superdriveupdate/
Christer
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