‘Book Mystique Review - Wegener Media 8x SuperDrive Upgrade For Pismo (and Lombard) PowerBooks
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
by Charles W. Moore
We’ve come a long way from the 400k floppy disks supported by the first Macs. Actually, the earliest PowerBooks could read and write 800k floppies. My first PowerBook, a 1996 5300, came with a 500 MB hard drive and also a floppy drive that could handle 800k and 1.4 MB floppies, but no CD-ROM drive, while my 1998 PowerBook G3 series had a 2 gigabyte a 20x CD-ROM drive but no disk-burning capacity. Back in the late ‘90s, 100 MB capacity Zip disks were still popular. Even my G3 iBook, purchased at the very end of 2002, had only a 24x CD-ROM optical drive, and my PowerBook Pismo, manufactured in October, 2001, had a non-burner DVD=ROM drive.
How things have changed! While some have suggested that the optical drive-less MacBook Air (an external dual-layer USB 2 SuperDrive is a “99 option) my be the thin edge of the wedge of an optical drive-less future, as the floppyless iMac proved to be in that context back in 1999, I’m doubtful that’s the case. There’s no adequate substitute - wireless or wired, for a recordable media drive for serious computing, although I personally prefer an external hard drive for data backups, and 700 MB burnable CDs are at the low end of the recordable media scale. For burnable media data backup, you need a “SuperDrive” DVD-burning drive that will allow you to store 4.7 gigabytes of your stuff on one, single-layer disk, or twice that much on dual-layer disks.
Disk-burning aside for a moment, a fairly frequent I receive from readers is what to do about malfunctioning DVD-ROM drives in Pismo PowerBooks. The Pismo is a great old laptop — I still have two of them in active duty — and there are tons of them still giving their usually satisfied users faithful service, but one of their few weak points is their tray-loading DVD-ROM drive, which is — how shall we say? -- not especially robust, and keeping it real, the newest Pismos are now seven years old.
My advice is usually to get a combo drive or SuperDrive module to replace the OEM DVD-ROM drive. One of the the coolest features of the Pismo is that its optical drive is in a removable expansion bay module, which makes swapping drives a 20-second operation. Just pull the release lever, pop out whatever module is in the expansion bay, slide in the new drive module, and you’re done.
As it happens, my own Pismo’s original DVD-ROM drive still works fine, but I long since replaced it with an 8x SuperDrive module from FastMac. A SuperDrive is am upgrade I heartily recommend whether or not your stock DVD-ROM drive has packed it in. Besides the FastMac unit, which is excellent, Wegener Media also offers an 8x SuperDrive upgrade for the Pismo (also fits the earlier PowerBook G3 Bronze Lombard which has an identical expansion bay configuration) that drive does a fine job of burning both CDs and DVDs, also reads both categories of disk, is bootable, and a slick slot-loader to boot. A 2x version is also available for ten bucks less, but I strongly recommend going with the 8x model.
The Wegener 8x drive’s specs are 8x DVDR+/-,24x CDR,24x CDRW, 8x DVD, 24x CDROM
Dual-layer. A complete drive module (just slide in and use) sells for $ 199.99, and you can get $40 back if you send your old DVD-ROM unit back to Wegeners.
However, if you would like to save some serious money, the same drive unit is available as a do-it-yourself installation kit with faceplate. The kit requires a simple installation that takes only a few minutes, and a photo guide is included. All electronics are brand new and you’ll only be recycling your existing expansion bay module frame.
If you don’t already have a small (#0) Philips screwdriver, your can order one with the kit for an additional $4.49.
To install the SuperDrive unit, just remove the four small Philips screws that secure the original DVD-ROM drive unit to the expansion bay sled and slide the drive out.
Then just slide the Superdrive module into the sled and replace the four screws.
You’re done!
All that’s left is to slide the drive module into the Pismo’s expansion bay and you’re ready to burn or play.
The Wegener Media 8X SuperDrive module for Pismo’s innards are a DVD RAM Matsushita UJ835S burner unit that supports CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+R, and DVD+RW. It also features Buffer Underrun Protection in both CD and DVD modes.
This Wegener upgrade burns DVDs at 8x speed (that is 8 times faster than Apple’s original “SuperDrive”) and rewrites DVDs at 4x speed. It also writes to DVD-RAM discs at 3x speed, CD-Rs at 24x speed, and CD-RWs at 10x speed -- essentially equivalent to the SuperDrives offered in late model PowerBook (The final, October, 2005 revisions of the PowerBook 15” and 17” have an 8x SuperDrive with dual-layer support) and the MacBook Pro. Indeed, it is the same Matsushita (Panasonic) UJ-825 internal mechanism, I understand.
The 8x SuperDrive changes the appearance of the right front corner of the Pismo slightly, and it doesn’t quite have the tailored look of the OEM drive, but it looks perfectly fine to me.
The unit has performed flawlessly for me, and is of course much faster than the Pismo’s original DVD-ROM drive (which is playback only). You can burn a complete 4.7 GB DVD in under 10 minutes.”
Indeed, I’ve found nothing to complain about with the Wegener Media 8x SuperDrive unit. It “just works.” THe drive is bootable, and is compatible with iTunes, CD-Burner, Toast, Burnz, Burn Again DVD, and of course the OS X Finder. Wegeners say it’s compatible with Mac OS9 .2, OSX Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger! I can confirm that it works great with Tiger, and I wouldn’t anticipate any problems with Leopard, if one has an unsupported install of OS 10.5 on their Pismo, but I can’t vouch for that from experience.
As I said, this is an upgrade I can highly recommend to anyone who wants to rejuvenate their Pismo with up-to-date disk-burning capability, or to just replace a dodgy DVD-ROM drive. I actually do most of my disk-burning on my Pismos because the 8X drive is faster than the 2x unit in my 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4.
For more information, visit:
http://www.wegenermedia.com/pismoslotdrives.htm
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