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."

Comments

I would use it, but...

[MikeXpop]

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.

Re:I would use it, but...

[shaitand]

Not neccesarily, apple didn't make the drive ;) Those who wrote the firmware didn't build the drive.

There is a chance this could simply be a case of the original designers not thinking out of the box. Look at the C64 display and the amazing display enchancing hacks for it.

Re:I would use it, but...

[zcat_NZ]

OR there's a chance they intentionally downgraded it (or were told to by UL) because the drive runs rather hot at full speed (several people have commented on this) and this might be an issue in a notebook computer.

Re:I would use it, but...

[whorfin]

Perhaps the manufacturer sells a variety of drive 'packages', and they all actually use the same hardware, and are differentiated only by the firmware running them. Saves the manufacturer a lot of money on engineering/producing several different product lines...

Kinda like when you go to a restaurant and the kids meal, at 1/3 the price, is the same food as the 'adult meal'.

Re:I would use it, but...

[shaitand]

aye so I read in the forum, of course that is just a random guess based on some problems that were known to exist with the drive, not hard fact as to why they did it.

My Other responder is just as likely to be right, apple downgraded the drive firmware in their cheaper product lines to give more motive to purchase the 17" instead.

Personally I suspect it's a case of both, the system runs a little hotter with the drive rev'd up, and they know the average idiot doesn't properly operate a laptop so that heat is controlled. They also know this would be a little less a factor in their 17". So as a combination of both, they figure they'll tweak down the lower models (which have a slight problem that would result in support calls but not affect the average user) and gain a secondary incentive to purchase the more beefy model.

I've worked for fortune 500 computer manufacturers though, and I assure you, whether it's the case here or not. They most definately DO clock down hardware on cheaper models and sometimes the only difference between the more expensive and less expensive model is the firmware (one example being the sony clie, which is a notorious line for this).

Re:I would use it, but...

[martingunnarsson]

The reason they disabled DVD-RW writing can't have anything to do with heat, or can it?

Re:I would use it, but...

[henele]

OR there's a chance they intentionally downgraded it (or were told to by UL) because the drive runs rather hot at full speed (several people have commented on this) and this might be an issue in a notebook computer.

Also bare in mind the Powerbook is a portable machine - DVD burning has got to be a ludicrously precise process, and doubling the speed at which the disk spins has got to increase the margin in error, especially in a setting where it could be shoved or moved around...

I guess results which come in over time will tell...

Re:I would use it, but...

[shaitand]

Dunno specifically about the DVD-RW writing, I imagine it's more intensive for the drive with the overhead involved in a RW but I'm no expert on the internal physical workings of the drive. Even the man who write the firmware upgrade doesn't know if the operations would actually cause any kind of heat issue.

I did it

[FueledByRamen]

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.

Re:I did it

[Kris_J]

"I did it and it didn't screw up my system" is actually fairly useful info, if the source can be trusted. No matter how many people post that it did or didn't work, each post is "+1 Informative". Certainly more informative than "I think it's stupid and you're stupid", which is what I believe you tend to see if you browse at 1.

Heh, great!

[EdMack]

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!

I also took the dive.

[obi-1-kenobi]

I installed this on my 12" PowerBook.
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 ;) ). Pitty that it doesn't enable a region free player or enable the DVD-Ram.

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.

Re:I also took the dive.

[go-low]

"Pitty that it doesn't enable a region free player or enable the DVD-Ram."

http://www.wormintheapple.gr/macdvd/download2.ht ml

Has many region free DVD hacks for you.

I suggest you decide between a faster or region-free drive though, 'cause I don't think you'll get both - yet!

Also, you might want to revert to the original firmware, before trying to install another hacked firmware (I'm not sure about it, but I'd imagine it'd be cleaner that way)

Apple has done this in the past

[Hackie_Chan]

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.

Re:Apple has done this in the past

[JjCale]

In the case of the iBook it is because when you desktop span, you diasble quartz extreme as the video ram must be shared between both displys. Without quartz extreme, the GUI is much much slower and less responsive. Thus Apple choosing to disable the screen spanning option and keeping the performance of the laptop as advertised.

Re:As if it wasn't bad enough . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple puts commodity hardware in pretty cases and doubles the price, but they cripple it, too? That's over the line!

a) Provide a pretty darn functional "do-it-all" drive in your notebook computers, giving people the power to burn CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and even DVD-Rs on a lappy. Restrict its performance slightly to ensure heat output is peachy. Consumers are gleeful.

b) Double the power (and thus increase the power consumption, and thus increase the heat output) of said drive. Consumers file class-action lawsuit over fried components and newly acquired lap-burns.

Think fast: You're Apple, which one do you pick?

Re:i tried it

[pontifier]

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.

I used it, and...

[dwightk]

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

Re:I used it, and...

[discstickers]

would that firmware patch include the fiber optics? ;)

12" Powerbook success

[gsfprez]

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.

UJ815 not region free

[xvi]

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...

Aren't We Missing Another Important Point?

[beporter]

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?

Re:Aren't We Missing Another Important Point?

[CordMeyer]

The documentation that came with my 12 inch PowerBook recommends that you only burn DVDs while on AC power, it obviously uses a lot of power.

Re:Aren't We Missing Another Important Point?

[Erik K. Veland]

I think a running DVD-burn will consume power off the charts either way, but I have a pretty well informed hunch running a 1x burn for an hour will consume more battery than a 2x burn for 30 minutes.

Re:DMCA ??

[Erik K. Veland]

Of course, you should undoubtedly use caution when burning at speeds not recommended (and in fact restricted) by Apple: Use on a flat surface in no more than room temperature conditions. If you are extra cautious, you can purchase a cooling fan, put it in the refrigerator or heck, even resort to not installing this unsupported firmware.

Re:They should fix OSX first

[remahl]

No matter how off topic this is, I must correct some things in the above...

1. Mach-O isn't specific to Apple. That is correct. However, Apple could have chosen to use the CFM format as the native executable format when they designed Mac OS X. That would have made a pretty significant performance increase to typical applications. See Slava Karpenko's article on the subject.
2. This is correct.
3. KDE / Gnome may be as ready for the _enterprise_ as Aqua. Ie, if they are set up by someone who knows all the requirements of the organization that is going to use them, and makes sure as much as possible is pre-configured. On the other hand, they are no where near as easy / pleasant to use as Aqua.
4. NetInfo is a heritage from the NeXTStep days, and something that Apple is moving away from (abstracting it using Directory Services, layered on top of for example LDAP and NetInfo). It has nothing to do with Classic compatibility.

I dunno

[DebianDog]

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

Re:They should fix OSX first

[jo_ham]

Alas, your post is in vain. The parent of your post is the same guy/girl/thing posting the "It takes 20 minutes to copy a 17mb file on my 8600/9600/Dual 1Ghz G4 and my pentium pro with 64Mb of RAM is much faster" troll.

It seems he's taken a new tack now, taking information he doesn't understand from an anti-Mac site that doesn't understand it either and posting it to every Apple thread on /.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Re:As if it wasn't bad enough . . .

[gsfprez]

this is no different than the pre-release builds of Apple software like Mac OS X.

when i use these things - i understand fully that they are not ready for use, they may cause all my data to be horked, and could cause the end of the universe. In fact, I recently had to completely reformat my hard drive and reinstall 10.2 clean after a 10.3 release screwed up just about everything on my machine. I didn't complain 1 second because I knew that was a possibility... I also had all my data backed up and it took me about 2 hours to get back situated to a completely good machine again.

MOST people in the open public would NOT act this way if Apple let out pre-release software. They would send nasty emails, they would complain that this or that doesn't function (i've heard people whine about how unstable iChat AV Beta is - BETA PEOPLE)

This is why Apple is conservative - because if they are not - their stuff would not "Just Work (tm)" and Mac users would get upset.

As for this hack - that is exactly what it is.. a hack. I waited nearly a week after the first time i heard about this - waited to see if anyone out there was having trouble with it - and so i took the pluge OF MY OWN RESPONSIBILITY. If i bork my laptop - well, i bork it. its my problem, not Apple's. I dont' go to Disneylnd hoping to slip on some water to make a million bucks - and i don't hold Apple responsible if i kill my computer because i wanted to burn DVDs at 2x.

If people could accept responsiblity in this lawyer-soaked country - then people could do more ans experience more in their lives... but we live in a place where a burglar can sue for getting shot while breaking into your home, where if you spill coffee on yourself because you are a klutzy moron - you can win $1M, and where OJ can walk free because if Chewbacca lives on Endor, that doesn't make sense.

Of COURSE Apple goes conservative - and they do it for many reasons. And when i need a machine that works well - for work - I use a Mac, and i don't dork with it.

When i'm having fun - i try things and see what happens - and take responsibility.

f you, you lawyer-bought liberals and your safety first must wear a fscking helmet bullshit. Its my life, not yours, you cockbites.