Sony DW-D150A are actuality NEC 4570's

[phantasm10]

Original Story Link:

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/10/07/hack-your-macpro-superdrive-for-fun-and-profit/

Link to Instructions on the Hack:

http://www.hardmac.com/articles/62/page1/

 

[Bill Gates]

Sony has been rebadging drives for quite some time now. I guess it's more profitable than having to R&D your own product.

 

[jsw]

The gist of the article:

The burner can be made region-free, burn CD-R's at 48x as opposed to 32x, and handle DVD-RAM disks.

Cool upgrade at no cost.

 

[Bill Gates]

The gist of the article:

The burner can be made region-free, burn CD-R's at 48x as opposed to 32x, and handle DVD-RAM disks.

Cool upgrade at no cost.

This reminds me of the days when people would upgrade their Lite-On CD burners. Drives could be upgraded to any other drive that used the same MediaTek chipset. I'm not sure if this is still the case. Those were the days!

 

[generik]

Can the drives in MBP/MB/Mini be made region free as well? Likewise, if you buy this drive and hook it up using a USB connector, can you watch dvds on it region free?

 

[Bill Gates]

Can the drives in MBP/MB/Mini be made region free as well? Likewise, if you buy this drive and hook it up using a USB connector, can you watch dvds on it region free?

Who makes the drives and what models are they?

 

[MRU]

They are matsushita UJ-857 and there is no firmware flash for it. This has been asked before.

 

[generik]

Who makes the drives and what models are they?

MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-846

A cool sounding model number too!

 

[Bill Gates]

They are matsushita UJ-857 and there is no firmware flash for it. This has been asked before.

Well there you go! If you bought an external drive that did have a firmware available for it, it'd be a different story.

 

[MRU]

Basically there were 2 guys who used to hack matsushita drives with firmwares. The last they did was 816 models. But that was a long time ago and they have since defunct. Matsushita themselves rarely ever release firmware either.

 

[generik]

So does it go to follow that if I get a NEC 4570, flash it in Windows to get it region free, I wouldn't have that prompt when I fire up DVD player?

Watching DVDs while trying to avoid locking out your DVD-rom drive is starting to get on me nerves, especially when we get all our series later here (in Australia) so you end up having to get them from the US.

 

[Bill Gates]

So does it go to follow that if I get a NEC 4570, flash it in Windows to get it region free, I wouldn't have that prompt when I fire up DVD player?

Watching DVDs while trying to avoid locking out your DVD-rom drive is starting to get on me nerves, especially when we get all our series later here (in Australia) so you end up having to get them from the US.

No. That would accomplish half of the problem. You would still need software to overcome the software region lock as well, or use a player that doesn't care about regions such as VLC.

 

[generik]

No. That would accomplish half of the problem. You would still need software to overcome the software region lock as well, or use a player that doesn't care about regions such as VLC.

Urgh, anyway even if DVD player is locked out, everything will be reset the moment I reinstall OSX right? No permanent damage so long as I use a region free drive correct?

 

[Bill Gates]

Urgh, anyway even if DVD player is locked out, everything will be reset the moment I reinstall OSX right? No permanent damage so long as I use a region free drive correct?

I'm not sure. Read this: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86194.

 

[bigandy]

my powerbook had a matsushita drive in it, which i flashed to region free.

well, RPC-1 anyway, which means you still have to change regions, but you can do it as much as you want. Apple DVD Player would still count down the 5 changes, but then when you ran out, you just changed the setting in a programme called DVD Region Free or something (can't really remember the name of it), back to the 5 choices again.

So yeah, you do still 'lose' the changes, but you can usually then reset them.

 

[aiongiant]

jsut flashed my mac pro sony drive to nec with the link
works great!

 

[suneohair]

Um.. My drive most assuredely isnt region free now...

 

[JONNYCHO]

damn I am going to try this

 

[suneohair]

Ok I figured out the region thing. Some of you may know this already, but for those that don't...

So, even though the drive is now region free (assuming you flashed the firmware) there is still region restrictions in the drive. DVD player will still ask you to change the region.

There is hope. http://rapidshare.de/files/24212221/RegionX.zip.html

That allows you to change the firmware undercover, allowing you to use the Apple DVD player in any region. It only works on drives that are RPC-1, or region free drives. You must flash the Sony drive the new firmware before this will work.

It works very well. It is a UB as well.

Basically all you do is run RegionX before you run DVD player. Set the region hit OK and you are good to go.

You could just use VLC and not do any of this, but I like the Apple DVD player...

 

[iMeowbot]

There is hope. http://rapidshare.de/files/24212221/RegionX.zip.html

That's the ticket.

Another page with PowerPC and Intel builds of Region X, and no Rapidshare hurdles to jump.