Sol4 - A Macs Tale Part 3 - Moving Further into the Mac World

A Macs Tale Part 3 - Moving Further into the Mac World

Following the surprising victory of my powerbook over the, furnace which is the Sydney summertime, now the poor things getting a real workout, as I need to start using the internal DVD burner.

Lets see if the combination of the internal DVD and the tail end of the Sydney summertime, is something thats actually survivable, and no, I don't have air conditioning....

From the first time I used the slot loaded DVD drive in my new powerbook, I noticed that even after playing a movie, it got hot, real hot, although functionality did not seem to suffer, so now that I am going to hammer it by burning several dozen DVDs (no not pirate movies!!) heat is a real concern.

The internal slot loading, DVD burner is actually a "OEM Matsushita UJ-815", which according to Apple is able to burn DVDs at 1x, CDs at 8x, CDRW at 4x and reads DVDs at 6x and CDs at 32x. Now while this does sound impressive its actually crippled compared to what the non-apple version of this drive can do, and yes there is a unofficial firmware update that restores the drive to its non-apple spec, by adding support for 2x DVD writing and so I am told DVD-RAM support.

Now before anyone rushes to google to look for this new firmware, there is a down side, which as expected is a terminal case of warranty death.

Yes thats right apple will do this if they find out anyone has used this firmware, and for once I can actually agree with them on this one. Just think about it, Apple crippled the drive for a reason, most likely excess heat, and by reversing this, you are risking harming your drive.

Just incase anyone missed the warning, you use this firmware at your own risk, no one will help you, any damage to your hardware is your own fault, which is why I have not included download links. You have been warned!

First question to be answered is what media to use?

Bundled with the machine was a single piece of apple branded DVD-R media, which, just as expected burned without any issues. So my first thought was to stick with these Apple branded DVDs, if for no other reason than its the safe option. First stop, the online apple store, to checkout the pricing, which as it turned out was my first mistake. Now I was expecting these things to be more expensive that non apple branded, but the truth turned out to be nothing short of shocking, with these things coming in at AUD$3 each, whereas non-apple branded media starts at around AUD$1

Time to checkout real world priced alternatives to this over priced Apple media. Now with CDR media I use nothing but Laser Branded media, so time to try some of their DVD-R and see what happens, er, well just as soon as I find out if they are compatible, that is.

For those new to DVD burning, unlike the good old CDR, its not a case of buy just about any media and it just works, where as with DVD its a bit of a mine field, with multiple "standards", and offerings from so many different vendors, as to make finding something that works with your burner, a real interesting experience.

To cut a long and very boring story short, the best way to find out what media works with your drive is to ask one of the media wholesalers, and no that does not mean the company who sold you the drive, as they will recommend there own media over everything else. In this case I just called the importer for "Laser" media in this country who confirmed compatibility with the superdrive.

That out of the way, the order placed for the much more realistic price of AUD$1.50 each, its time to answer the software question.

First option is to use the CDR/DVDR burning support thats integrated into OSX Finder, which while fully functional does have one drawback. And yes this drawback bit me big time, after I used the single piece of DVD-R media bundled, and found that nothing but a mac could read the burned disk. Not a good start, and something that was totally unexpected, especially as I asked apple about this, to be told "PCs should be able to read them".

NOTE: This compatibility pain was under OSX 10.2.26, and may have been fixed under 10.3, although I have not had time/need to check this out. Anyone with more information on this one under 10.3.x please contact me and I will update this page, crediting you.

Rather than dwell on this pain, my second option was to use cdrtools just as I did under Linux. Just before going down this path, I thought it well worth while asking a number of Mac user friends what they used, just in case something much better existed for OSX.

Another good move, as yes there is something better than cdrtools for OSX, with most of those I asked using something called toast which seems to have evolved from the old adaptec CDR software, that I used to use under windoze all those years back.

The bad news was that this thing is payware, which is something I do not normally do, preferring GPL licensed, but in this case after a had a quick play with it on a friends Mac, I decided that this thing was worth it and ordered my own copy.

Before I forget, I actually did download cdrtools for OSX, but as yet have not managed to get it to compile under OSX, so expect more on that one, plus a build HOWTO, as soon as I get it working.

Now armed with toast and a pile of Laser DVD-R 4x media, its time to see how it works, or more importantly how hot it gets.

The first burn was interesting, I just inserted the blank, and up popped toast, I dragged a few files across from finder into the toast window, it said all was well with the world, er well, so I thought anyway.

First problem, was not really one to do with the powerbooks burner, more to do with a oddity with toast, where it decided that my blank DVD-R was actually a CDR and quite rightly refused to burn it.

This was a interesting and more than a little unsetteling discovery, especially as finder is able to detect what type of media is being used. I will have to look into that one some more, and never know, when Toast 6.03 arrives, the time could be right for a review.

Anyway getting back to the task at hand, its back to the burning, and yes I did tell toast it was working with DVD, not CD media.

After the toast oddity, the actual burn went without any problems, it just took quite a while, we are talking over 40 minutes, not that that should be any surprise given the single speed nature of the superdrive. Now for the heat, well sure it got warm, but not what I would call hot, or even out of the ordinary.

So a single burn did not melt the drive, burn me or do anything else out of the ordinary, so now for some more of the same, this time its production line time.

Half dozen burns later, two coasters, and yes its hot, real hot, so hot that touching the casing above the drive is not a painless thing to do, plus the fans are running about as fast as it gets, indeed the whole machine is hot, real hot.

Anything that runs this hot, is not a good thing, so rather than risk hardware damage, or even more coasters, its time for a shutdown, to let the poor thing cool down, before doing anything else.

Now before anyone really gets concerned over this, its not really a surprise that the poor thing got this hot, just think about it, the powerbook is a laptop, and is not really designed for production line DVD (or CD) burning. Since doing this testing, I have only use the superdrive for the odd DVD and CD, and yes while it gets warm, to me this is not a problem, just a fact of life, and something that should not put anyone off getting a powerbook.

As for me, well I do need to produce fairly large numbers of DVDs (no still not pirate movies!!!), so needed other options for a burner, and given that I had a powerbook not a desktop machine, that meant external.

External may be the only option, but to me it brings back some really painful memories, of my time working in the dark side with some of the first external CD burners. So need I say it, the thought of a repeat did not do nice things to me, but since there are no other choices, I had to bite the bullet and go down that path.

A Macs Tale Part 3 - Moving Further into the Mac World

Related Pages and Links