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Hack your Mac Pro SuperDrive for fun and profit

by Dan Lurie Oct 7th 2006 at 4:00PM

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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It's not uncommon for computer manufacturers to swap and switch out various components for similar or near-identical parts during a...
 

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Christer

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

November 30 2006 at 4:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Christer

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

November 23 2006 at 10:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
M Hillyard

If I want to add a second superdrive and buy an NEC5470A, will it work in the Mac Pro?

October 25 2006 at 4:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mooner

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.

October 10 2006 at 5:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nicolas

So - when the system software updates..... will i need a firmware update? and how do i go about doing a firmware update?

October 10 2006 at 11:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JJServer

Does anyone know how to do this on a MacBook Pro

i would really like to know how fast it will really burn

cheers

October 08 2006 at 2:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daniel

/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

October 08 2006 at 1:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Adrian vG

Now to make the macbooks region free...

October 08 2006 at 5:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

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.

October 07 2006 at 11:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Moquiti

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?"

October 07 2006 at 11:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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