[muchachotron]

i have an 800mhz titanium powerbook with a stock combo drive, and this drive is failing. i also have a 1.5ghz 17 inch aluminum powerbook. i am planning to buy the mce dual-layer burning superdrive upgrade for my 17 inch and then transfer the superdrive that is currently in the 17 inch to the 15 inch powerbook.

will this work? the upgrade mce is selling says it is for all powerbooks that currently have combo drives or superdrives. i'm assuming this should work. mce is selling 2 versions of these powerbook upgrades - one is for 'books with combo drives or superdrives as i said before, and the other is for 'books that only have dvd-roms or cd-roms (listed as 400-667MHz units, mine is 800mhz and has the combo drive). i'm afraid that the superdrive from the 17 inch may not fit correctly or may generate too much heat or something problematic like that. the loading slot may not line up correctly with the outer shell of the 15 inch.

here are the mce drives:
http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/m...de=STORLTDVDRW

also, are these the same drives? they are a bit cheaper, but seem to be spec'd the same (though the listed specs are very minimal here, perhaps kind of shady?):
http://www.techrestore.com/xcart/home.php?cat=256

- d

[hakstooy]

yeah, it'll work.

you might need to download some drivers to make it work natively with ilife stuff (the name of which escapes me at present, google around and you'll find it) but it'll work fine with toast and such.

but, while replacing the tibook's drive will be a piece of pie, the 17 is no cake-walk, WAY easier than a 12, but not trivial. make sure you get directions off the web (again the location escapes me) and make sure you take care when opening the case, which is the truly difficult part, and the easiest step to damage your albook during.

--

also, you don't need to buy these marked up drives from "mac" retailers. just look for the part number ie: pioneer/matshita uj-845s (the superdrive i used to upgrade my 12) and there are large wholesalers who sell them for up to $100 less than what the "mac" places do.

[Jerman]

I've been looking at upgrading the superdrive in my 15" to one of these DL burners, one of the cheaper pioneers. Do you know if this voids the warranty? I have Applecare for almost 2 years still and don't want to void it...

[hakstooy]

yeah, i think it will. apple will certainly discourage this sort of thing because they don't want you mucking around in there.

from what i recall when i was looking at this before was that while you are unofficially OK doing this sort of thing as long as you don't break anything when you do it, is that if anything, even something entirely unrelated, ends up getting screwy in the future and you have to send your PB in apple will likely blame your fiddling.

i don't know if it's as absurd as if you replace your optical drive and apple blames that for your latch later failing or what. but i think that technically they can claim as such since the warranty is technically voided by any fiddling other than installing RAM.

of course, if you have an unrelated problem, they may not even notice the different drive.

unless you have some real need or driving passion in using DL disks (they're really expensive by the way...dunno if you've looked at that) i'd leave the superdrive you have in. it really wouldn't be worth the headache you'd have if something went wrong. of course, if DL is a huge concern, you could always take it to a tech an have them do it, a 15 is a 1 hour job and would be about $80.

[zanyterp]

i *think* the software needed to have iLife apps play nice with the new superdrive is patchburn (http://www.patchburn.de/)

[ibook_steve]

No, it won't work. From what I recall (I worked mostly on the 12" Powerbooks but I've seen many open titaniums), the titanium PBs were the first slot load machines, and the drive mechanism was completely custom. It was rectangular, boxy, and long whereas the current mechanisms are not much bigger than an optical disk and are not box shaped. Your drive from the 17" will not fit correctly in the 15". The pictures in the fixit guides (http://www.pbfixit.com) prove it.

Steve

[hakstooy]

yes it will, the only tibooks with different optical mounting brackets are the models that didn't have combo/superdrives. which his is not.

i know this for a FACT because the drive thats in my 12" right now used to be in my 867 tibook.

the albooks optical drives are all the same form and are interchangeable.

---


yeah, patchburn, thats it. good call zany.

[zanyterp]

thank you hakstooy.

[muchachotron]

mmm, thats where i was confused. some sites selling these drives seem to have a particular model for ALL tibooks and a different one for ALL aluminum books, and then some have one for the tibooks that did not come with a combo drive - anything up to the 667mhz tibook model (my 800mhz does have the combo drive, which i feel is failing). so, thats good news if i can indeed transfer the 17 inch superdrive to the 15 incher. i'm particularly interested in this superdrive upgrade because i have one powerbook which needs a new optical drive. if i can't transfer the superdrive that is already in my 17 inch to the 15 inch, i'll probably just go with an external drive. this would still leave me with a bum optical drive in the tibook, though.

i did not get applecare with my 17 inch, so i'm assuming it is already out of warranty. i do have safeware, in case anything goes horribly wroing or explodes during the install.

right, dual layer media is expensive right now. since dual layer drives are becoming more popular, however, perhaps it will go down this upcoming christmas season or sooner.

thanks for the discussion, everybody! very helpful.

- d