Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

PowerBook G4 SuperDrive Speed Bump Hack

Posted by pudge on from the do-not-try-this-at-home dept.

George Wright writes "A guy called cynikal has managed to hack the firmware on the PowerBook G4's "Superdrive" (the Panasonic UJ-815A slimline slot loading DVD-R/RW burner) to enable DVD-R burning at 2x (instead of 1x), DVD-RW burning at 1x (instead of it being disabled), CD-R burning at 16x (instead of 8x) and CD-RW burning at 8x (instead of 4x). Thanks a lot cynikal! The drive now reports as a UJ-815A instead of a UJ-815, and has a firmware revision of D101 instead of the DOC4, DOCB or DWDB the PowerBooks came with. A firmware downgrader can be obtained from the same place to downgrade back to DOCB if you want to, and there is a discussion thread."

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Re:i tried it by pontifier · · Score: 3, Funny

    This just in... A house fire yesterday was found to be caused by a new type of computer security system which causes a stolen computer to burst into flames. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah was unavailable for comment.

    --
    -John Fenley
  2. I used it, and... by dwightk · · Score: 4, Funny

    It works great on my 12" PB... The only question I have is does this reduce the life of the drive? I bet it doesnt though.

    Now if someone would write a firmware update that turned on the keyboard backlighting :-P

    --
    Like anyone can even know that
    1. Re:I used it, and... by discstickers · · Score: 2, Funny

      would that firmware patch include the fiber optics? ;)

      --
      I have a shitty sig!