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The Road Warrior Review: Wegener Media 8x SuperDrive Upgrade Kit For Pismo (and Lombard) PowerBooks

One of the things that dates an older PowerBook is the lack of a disc-burning optical drive. For example, my two my PowerBook Pismos, manufactured in January and October, 2000, came with non-burner DVD=ROM drives.

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, so to speak 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. The only potentially adequate substitute for a recordable media drive for serious computing would be USB flash drives, and they may prevail in the long run, but the CD and DVD aren't going to go the way of the floppy anytime soon, although I personally prefer an external hard drive for data backups, and 700 MB burnable CDs are now 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 question I receive from readers is what to do about malfunctioning DVD-ROM drives in Pismo PowerBooks. The Pismo is a great old laptop — my two are both still in active duty - and there are lots of them out there still going strong and giving their usually satisfied users faithful service, but one of the Pismo's few weak points iis its tray-loading DVD-ROM drive, which is - how shall we say? - not especially robust, and keeping it real, the newest Pismos are now more than 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 does a fine job of burning both CDs and DVDs, also reads both categories of disk, is bootable, and is 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.

Wegeners have recently made substantial proce drops on all of their lines of Pismo/Lombard optical drives, and the The 8x SuperDrive kit that I tested for this review as a drive module with faceplate, installation kit, and instructions (specs.: 8x DVDR+/-,24x CDR,24x CDRW, 8x DVD, 24x CDROM Dual-layer) now sells for a modest $139.99, which is 10 bucks cheaper than any other 8x Pismo drive upgrade kit I know of. All electronics are brand new and you'll only be recycling your existing expansion bay module frame.

If you'd rather not touble yourself with the few minutes of work it takes to install the kit, the 8x SuperDrive, same technical specs. as above, but as a complete drive module (just slide in and use), is now $ 159.99, and you can still get $40 back if you send your old DVD-ROM unit back to Wegeners.

And if you want to upgrade your RAM while you're in the hotrodding zone, Wegeners also offer the 8X SuperDrive Kit bundled with 1 GB of RAM for the Pismo for $219.99, or $30 off regular separate pricing.

There is also a 2x SuperDrive kit (2x DVDR,16x CDR,10x CDRW, 8x DVD, 24x CD) - drive with faceplate, installation kit,iand instructions available for $99.99, or as a complete drive you can just slide in and use for $109.99 ($40 core rebate when you send your dead unit back.). The 2x SuperDrive kit with 1GB of bundled RAM (for Pismo) is $179.99

For more information, visit:
http://wegenermedia.com/pismooffercombos.htm
and
http://www.wegenermedia.com/pismoslotdrives.htm

However, if you would like to save money, get the 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.

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 on the left and right sides of the drive module that secure the original DVD-ROM drive unit to the expansion bay sled and slide the drive out.

Make sure you remember which screws came out of which side because they aare different lengths. Grasp the old DVD drive while holding the plastic drive sled housing with your other hand and slide the mechanism completely out of the plastic sled.

Then just slide the Superdrive module into the sled until the four screw holes line up and replace the screws, gently tighten them, and 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.

I've found nothing much to complain about with the Wegener Media 8x SuperDrive unit. It "just works." THe drive is bootable, and is compatable with iTunes, CDBurner, 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 recommend, especially with the recent price reductions, to anyone who wants to rejuvinate their Pismo or Lombard 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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cmoore@macopinion.com


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