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PowerBook G4 SuperDrive Speed Bump Hack
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."
Well this article has been on for 10 minutes and no posts yet, so fp for me.
Non-official firmware things like this scare me. If it wasn't included by Apple, there's most likely a reason.
Caveat emptor. Even though it's free.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Well, I installed the firmware hack on my 17" Powerbook. Looks to me like it's working fine; still reads CDs at least. I'm too poor to buy DVD-R discs (spent all my money on the Powerbook), so I can't say if there are any improvements in that department. At least nothing's burst into flames yet.
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
Does this affect DMCA in any way ??
is that the sweet smell of a Cease & Desist order...?
This is brilliant, but unfortunately it's now found speed increases the temperature, and not only burns the disk, but me under ^_^. Never-the-less, brilliant!
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
Let's start with the windowing environment, since that is the first thing users will notice. While both KDE and GNOME are mature, stable, and accepted as IEEE standards, Apple has elected to use neither. In fact, they don't even use X at all! Their display system is a proprietary, closed-source system called Quartz Extreme. In addition to the moral issues involved with closed software, this precludes the user from running X apps. There is an untested and alpha-quality X11 emulation layer available for download, but it is emulation, so programs will be slow. Does this sound like a standards-based system to you?
Looking under the hood, it gets worse. While all other *nixes use standard ELF binaries, Darwin (Apple's name for their proprietary "Unix" kernel) does not. It uses Mach-O, an unproven format that is proprietary to Apple. The moribund FreeBSD, off which OS X is based, uses ELF, so clearly Apple went to the extra effort of "switching" (heh) simply to break compatibility. With ELF, users would be able to run most of their Lunix apps; with Mach-O this is impossible. Additionally, Apple has moved most configuration info fromhuman readable text files into a proprietary database called "NetInfo", which is much like the Windows registry we all loathe. Why? These are only a few of the ways that Apple has deliberately broken compatibility with other systems, presumably in order to lock users in to expensive Mac hardware.
When we factor in the threat to users' civil liberties that is posed by the DRM included to support the iTunes Music Store (do you really think it will end there?) it is obvious that real *nix gurus should give OS X a wide berth. Caveat emptor.
I installed this on my 12" PowerBook. ;) ). Pitty that it doesn't enable a region free player or enable the DVD-Ram.
This is great! Now I can finaly burn to DVD-RW and the speed increases are also pretty cool. I haven't noticed any side effects as of yet (i don't think it would be a good idea to burn a DVD-R faster if your laptop is on the blanket
It is possible to also downgrade the drive back to its original DOCB. You are however not able to do this on a 17" PowerBook. There is no real increase for the 17" PB except now I think you can burn 2x DVD-R. Therefore I would not really recomend people with 17" PBs to do this.
"You win again Gravity!" -Futurama (Zapp)
~~~
and it works brilliantly. unfortunately my 12" powerbook was stolen that night. what a cunt.
Apple cripple it's hardware all the time... They do this on the iBooks. They've crippled the graphics cards so you can't desktop span with a second screen -- this is to try to lure the sales over to those who need it on to the Powebooks. Sad but true, yes.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
This is one of the shittiest troll's I've seen in a long time. It's not even remotely coherent, and the people it's aimed at are the ones most likely to realize it's a troll. Try again, retard, preferably on K5, where they'll eat your balls for this kind of tripe.
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.
:-P
Now if someone would write a firmware update that turned on the keyboard backlighting
Like anyone can even know that
i just installed it on a 12" PowerBook G4 with superdrive.
just burned 4.2 gigs of DiVX DVD rips onto Apple 2x media in thin jewel cases with Toast 5.1.2 at 2x. Burned in 30 minutes flat. No errors. Formerly could only burn at 1x.
just burned mandrake ix86 9.2b iso onto Memorex black CD-R 700 meg media with Toast 5.1.2 at 16x Burned in 4 minutes and 15 seconds. formerly could only burn at 8x.
it works for me. Of course, I installed a PowerMax ata-33 ide card, Intrega USB for Windows only PCI card, a SonnetTech G4/450 CPU card, and Firewire PCI card in a PowerMac 7500 running Mac OS X 10.2 and used it as my primary email server until 6 months ago..... so i'm not exactly the conservative computer user...
ymmv and if your powerbook blows up, don't blame me.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Or do you wait until the mythical G5 shows up.
Apple zealots please flame away...
Alas, there's NO region free firmware for this drive yet.
Matsushita took some steps to prevent this: the firmware is encrypted, etc...
More and more drives are protected against patching (Pioneer, etc...). Smells like some kind of pressure from the movie industry here...
Is it just me, or another seriously important point being overlooked? I quite agree that heat is of a large concern, having access to (and a lot of experience with) both a 12 and 17 inch PowerBook, but seeing as these machines are laptops, they are frequently not plugged in to AC power.
Admittedly, trying to burn a DVD while moving the laptop around is not such a wise idea, but power consumption (and by direct extension: battery life) might also have been a valid [marketing?] reason for locking the speed of this drive down. Of course, is it any more energy efficient to burn twice as long at half the speed?
http://www.csreloaded.com
If this DVD Writer has been crippled due to heat or battery issues, why did Apple disallow burning of RW DVD's? Why must they all burn DVD-R and if it is for compatibility then shouldn't that be up to the customer, afterall if they allow RW then it gives them greater choice anyway.
Jonathanjk.com
I have a 17" powerbook. The firmware upgrade seemed to work just fine. I installed it, and am burning a test audio CD right now (at 16x, but that is just like before. Most important is that it still works.) The patch does make the drive seem like new hardware, which, of corse, apple immediately recognizes...
Has anyone tried to burn a DVD, esp. with one of the new formats? Please, we are all dying to know..
Well this is all well and good but as soon as you start burning things at a higher rate than they were intended you start losing compatibility. In this, I mean, it will play in fewer player than it would if you did a nice slow burn at 1X. I have a 2x drive and still alter the OS (via iTunes) to burn at 1X.
I would test it throughly with a few standalone DVD players and have a backout plan. --
Daniel C. Slagle
Keeper of the "Unofficial" iMovie FAQ
Tell Apple how you feel about iMovie
See Apple's web site. This news is irrelevant. Free BJ to anyone who buys me one, just reply to this message with your e-mail address. I am an Apple user and I am gayyyyyyy.
For the purists, Apple offers 2x DVD-R that's guaranteed to work with Superdrives.
Would it be viable for them to offer DVD-RW as well?
-spheric*
Can anyone confirm the fact that you cannot downgrade on a 17"? It doesn't make sense to me that you wouldn't be able to downgrade a 17" but you would be able to downgrade the other models. Also, what about the Apple Warranty/AppleCare Protection Plan? Do these firmware upgrades void those warranties? (The only reason I ask is that my boss has a 17", and if I recommend that he upgrade and it voids his warranty, well, I'm in trouble ;)
Thank you!
Many things concur to the current situation. Firmware encryption and other counter-measures, the lack of a "universal" firmware flash utility in OS X (like Multi-Flasher was in OS 9), wife, kids, kids, wife, free time lack etc.
Note that I didn't totally give up, just like taking a HUGE break instead.
Now, if only this would make my iBook's combo drive turn into a 1x SuperDrive. Then, I'd be happy ;)
And it works as billed.
2X DVD burning
16x CD burning
ala Toast Titamium 5 and iTunes on 10.2.6
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Because of the phase-change technology involved in -RW writing, the disc must heat up more than with -R to transition from amorphous to crystalline (and probably also from crystalline to amorphous). With -R, the laser is just burning off a dye, sort of like what happens to colored fabrics when they're exposed to the sun for prolonged periods.
unfortunately it's now found speed increases the temperature, and [sic] only burns the disk
but I thought you were supposed to burn discs....
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Installed the patch on a 17" Powerbook. Wrote CD-RW with same rock solid performance as always. Wrote DVD-RW (media was a Pioneer DVD-RW DVS-RW47B/U) with no problem. Tested the disks in the usual suspects... everyone's happy. I didn't bother burning any -R's simply because I didn't have anything that needed burning and didn't want to waste the media; however, I can't imagine they're not fine too.
Very, very cool. I'll have to make a visit to Paypal and buy this man a beer.
Good on know you're just taking a break, from all the non-assembly savvy mac-users out here! Best of luck with the wife and kids, and try to avoid too much nappy-changing eh! --A user who read the guide on how to region-free firmware patches and was horribly confused
Are you an idiot?
NetInfo is a type of directory service that originated from NeXTSTEP / OpenStep, and remains AS A PLUGIN for backwards compatibility purposes. Apple is now moving away from NetInfo, because there are standards out there that are worth using now.
Go ahead and crack open Directory Access and you will see quite the amazing things listed there:
AppleTalk (Legacy crap, still there for AppleShare Servers from the days of 'yore)
BSD Configuration Files (you know, those human readable text files that you say don't exist)
LDAPv2 / LDAPv3 (you know, those open standards that you say they don't use)
NetInfo (for older Mac OS X Server 1.2 / Mac OS X Server 10.0 / 10.1)
NIS (Oh, there's another standard that they don't use, according to you)
Rendezvous (Oh, I guess they aren't using the ZeroConf standard either)
SLP (Whoops, one more standard you say they don't have support for)
SMB (Aww shucks! This is getting old, isn't it?)
Maybe you should actually look into some of this stuff before you read-and-regurgitate. All of these are available in the current shipping OS that has been on the market for 11 months now, and the marketing-speak coming from Apple sounds like we will see a true ADSI-interface for Active Directory in 10.3.
Gee, won't that burst your bubble when my PowerBook can join Active Directory, as well as all those other directory services out there.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Thanks for all your hard work over the years anyway, you have been a great help to the Macintosh community :)
With 32MB, I get quartz extreme active on both displays when spanning hack enabled.
For hack, visit macosxhints.com and search ibook+monitor
I'm sure the drive uses much more power when running twice as fast, draining your powerbook's battery quicker. Has anyone who's used this firmware 'upgrade' noticed shorted battery lives than before installing it?