[DavidHossack]

I was just wondering if it was possible that I could buy a Pioneer DVR-106 off ebay (biege PC version) and swap out the combo drive on my eMac (1.25GHz) and have it work with iTunes and iDVD. I kind of regret not getting the Super drive now.

Would it be a really complex process?

Opening the case doesn't daunt me.

[Big Mac]

The eMac isn't engineered for user upgradable hard drives. Are you pretty experienced with working in computer internals? Do you know what an AIO machine entails in terms of voltage risk and how to properly discharge it? I once spoke to a guy who said he hated the iMac CRT because it was a pain in the rear having to discharge the voltage. Unless you're up to the challenge, I would not attempt it. There's also no telling whether or not a standard drive will fit in the eMac.

It may be a better idea to get an external burner, especially now that it appears that iDVD now implicitly supports external burners through disk image creation.

[vmarks]

It is absolutely possible to open the eMac and replace the DVD-ROM/cd-rw with a superdrive.

DVR-106, 107, and 108 will all work (although the 108 and newest may take a small driver to get OS X to like it with finder burning and such- macsales.com has this if needed.)

You realize you void warranty, must practice precautions to avoid electric shock, I'm not responsible if you zap yourself and cause serious injury, etc.

But it's possible.

For a while, there was a company whose business was to take eMacs and upgrade them for you. Apple put a stop to it when they threatened to yank said company's license to sell new macs.


You probably should consider going with the dvr106 if that's what shipped in eMacs of your model that did come with superdrive- I can't recall off the top of my head at 7am if the 107 and 108 drives are longer and would or wouldn't fit, although my inclination is to believe that they would.

[cyclotron]

I have had previous experience opening up Macs from the Fatmac thru an iMac rev.B and iMac DV 400SE. (I'm also a qualified Microwave Radar Engineer which helped a bit with the twin threats of static damage to the Motherboard and - problem in the other direction - 25kV potential damage to the user!).

The small capacitances of the CRT can store an EHT charge for up to 24h, and it's not unknown for people to drop a TV set onto a hard - unforgiving floor just when you're manipulating it to get it face-down ready on the table for repair. (Even the 'low' 110V/220V power supply circuit has a high value capacitor which can leak a small charge onto almost anything metal on the eMac/TV for quite a few minutes after unplugging) this small charge usually isn't dangerous - but it's literally enough of a shock to sometimes bounce test a TV!

I'd rate the Optical drive swap job as reasonably difficult - it is a well engineered but complex 3 dimensional puzzle with the odd semi-hidden screw and some careful mechanical alignment necessary on re-assembly. There's a photo story of how-to-do-it somewhere on Goooogle

I took the opportunity to swap out the 40GB HDD with a 120GB ATA100/133 drive at the same time as the Pioneer. The HDD is inside an aluminium heat sink unit and requires careful re-use of some sticky thermal heat transfer pads on 3 sides of the HDD.

Once the system was running again I needed to use the "PatchBurn" enabler to let iDVD3 get access to the drive and now it's fully functional. PatchBurn is currently 3.0b8 and can be found at VersionTracker or macupdate.com. (requires OS X 10.3)

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Mac Mini II wanted : OS X 10.4 1GB Ram 64MB Video 1.8GHz G5