Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple SuperDrive Gets Faster....For Free

Posted by timothy on from the good-upgrade dept.

garaxiel writes "Just made a punch over to apple's website to notice a link detailing an update to all SuperDrives (or most; they provide a way to check if you're up to date) so that the superdrive can use the newer, faster media. Heck, if this is all I had to do to get a faster burner back in the day, I would have gladly switched to Apple!"

10 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. No, it doesn't by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 4, Informative
    From the FAQ on the linked site:
    Will this update enable my 2x SuperDrive to write at a higher speed?
    This update enables you to read from and write to the new media, but it does not increase the speed of the drive. In fact, the updated 2x SuperDrive writes to this new media at 1x. So to obtain the highest performance from your 2x SuperDrive, we recommend that you continue using 2x DVD-R media just as you do today.

    So, your drive doesn't get faster. In fact, if you buy the wrong kind of media, it gets slower.
    --
    "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
    1. Re:No, it doesn't by Drakino · · Score: 4, Informative

      And Mac users can't seem to understand why everyone else thinks they're stupid.

      Ironicially, this proves the point in the other direction. The person who submitted the article said "I would have gladly switched to Apple" indicating he is currently not a Mac user.

      It's also a duplicate story, posted here on Slashdot months ago

  2. RTFA. by mikedaisey · · Score: 4, Informative


    You do not get a faster SuperDrive than you currently have. You'd know that if you had actually read the page you linked to rather than spasmodically sending it straight to Slashdot. From the same page:

    "Will this update enable my 2x SuperDrive to write at a higher speed?
    This update enables you to read from and write to the new media, but it does not increase the speed of the drive."

    As I said the other day, I thought that previewing was supposed to help improve accuracy?

  3. Old update, so drive doesn't destroy itself. by jkujawa · · Score: 2, Informative

    This update has been out for months. The drives, as shipped, would destroy themselves if they encountered fast media. This patch makes them able to write the new media, but they still run at the rated speed of the drive. They don't burn any faster with this patch.

  4. This isn't news... by NetCurl · · Score: 3, Informative
    Check the lower right hand side, and I quote:

    Document Posted 11-07-2002.

    This is five months old.

    --

    It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...

  5. No it doesn't by moosesocks · · Score: 4, Informative

    The update doesn't make the drives write faster. The article, says that the update allows 4x media to be written to at 1x or 2x speeds on the SuperDrive. I believe it has something to do with the new 4x media being slightly different (I seem to recall that this also effects PC DVD-R drives as well, and similar updates are availible for those drives)

    To quote directly from the FAQ:

    Will this update enable my 2x SuperDrive to write at a higher speed?
    This update enables you to read from and write to the new media, but it does not increase the speed of the drive. In fact, the updated 2x SuperDrive writes to this new media at 1x. So to obtain the highest performance from your 2x SuperDrive, we recommend that you continue using 2x DVD-R media just as you do today.

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  6. Won't work for aftermarket Pioneer drives by Van+Halen · · Score: 2, Informative
    As someone else said, this has been around for a long, long time. I tried to update my aftermarket DVR-A03 drive (basically the same thing as the original SuperDrive, but I bought it separately) but this utility wouldn't do it. I found one that did at Pioneer's website. Only drawback was that I had to reboot to OS 9 in order to apply it, but better than screwing up my drive by using newer media!

    Hmm, I wonder if that means you can't update an aftermarket drive in the latest PowerMacs, which supposedly do not boot natively to OS 9? Buyer beware, I guess.

    --

    Say hello to zMac.

  7. Flashing your aftermarket drive by yroJJory · · Score: 2, Informative

    It depends on the drive, but there are two parts to the Pioneer firmware: kernel & general

    What firmware updater you can apply depends upon what kernel your drive was most recently installed with. If you can get the kernel installer from Apple, you can make the drive look like an Apple-supplied unit and Apple's OS X firmware updaters will work for you. If not, you could always find a way to install the non-Apple firmware parts into Apple's firmware updater package, right?

    --
    Jory
  8. Old, and furthermore... by wirelessbuzzers · · Score: 3, Informative

    This update doesn't make you able to burn new media faster. It enables you to burn new media slower so that your drive doesn't catch on fire .

    Just so you know.

    --
    I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
  9. Re:What's the big deal? by capmilk · · Score: 2, Informative

    You didn't. The new ROMs needed for SuperDrives were only available in later SEs. The Plus would have no idea how to handle a SuperDrive.
    IIRC the machine also had to have a chip named SWIM (Super Wozniak Integrated Machine).