A Work Of Obsanity

With the mild success of Matinee and my growing interest in backing up and digitizing my massive DVD collection, I figured that it was time to upgrade the SuperDrive (a DVD Burner to those PC users out there) that Apple shipped with my Dual G5 PowerMac. With the exception of adding memory and an additional hard drive to the system, this was the first time that I ever swapped out a piece of crucial hardware. In the end, I not only added the new Dual Layer DVD Burner; I took it in and out of the system four different times.

The photo above shows my PowerMac minus an optical drive. Figuring out how to get the stock SuperDrive out was a challenge in itself. That was until I realized it helped if I disconnected it from the Logic Board first. As I found out when adding another hard drive, Apple has the coolest way to plug shit in. Also as with the hard drive, I didn’t have to use any tools to install this thanks to the mounting system they have inside the case.

Just to be clear, I removed the stock SuperDrive which is a Pioneer DVR-106 DVD Burner and replaced it with a Pioneer DVR-109 Dual Layer DVD Burner. You can find these in retail stores (with a slightly different model number) but you will pay about $50 more and get software you don’t need (as it won’t run on your Mac). Instead, head on over to NewEgg and pick up the OEM version of the drive for $60. A couple days later your new SuperDrive will arrive via FedEx.

So as I said before, I had to install this four separate times and I hope you will learn from my time consuming mistakes. First off, before you even put the screw slides in the bottom of the drive, you need to get a thick paper clip and put it in the small hole on the front of the drive to manually eject it. Doing so will allow you to take off the front “lip” off the tray. This lip is to big and will catch on the PowerMac’s case. Secondly, don’t forget to put the metal clip around the front of the drive like the one had when you took it out. A stupid mistake, I know, but when you are excited you miss things like this. Lastly, and this one I remembered about in advance, don’t forget to reset the jumpers on the back of the drive. You want to put it on the third set for “Cable Select”

My last recommendation is if you have access to a PC, install it in to it first and upgrade the firmware. For some reason, even though you have to do absolutely nothing to this drive to get it to run on OS X (I am using OS 10.4 Tiger), Pioneer does not support this drive running on a Mac and there for has no way to flash it. If you decide to do the firmware upgrade as I did, it will bump it to version 1.4.

After you do that, put it back into your PowerMac, plug everything back in and boot up. You won’t even notice the drive is different as the transition is seamless. I tested it out with iTunes first and it alerted me that my preferred drive (Pioneer DVR-106) was not available and if I would like to use the available burner (Pioneer DVR-109). The one thing that you will notice is the speed difference. This optical drive is so much faster and if you do a lot of burning, that is a big plus. The volume of the drive is the same so I didn’t notice any changes there.

If anyone has any questions on removing and installing or configuring a new SuperDrive go ahead and leave a comment below. I’ll be happy to answer any questions I can.