[X4U] Superdrive replacement for iMac

[Stroller]

On Dec 20, 2005, at 7:17 pm, Paul Biddlecomb wrote:
>
> A friend of mine has been having trouble burning DVD's lately with her 
> iMac (swivel-arm).  The current drive is a PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-104.  
> ...  It looks to me like a burner issue.  What models world work in 
> the iMac with iDVD?  And how difficult is it to swap out?

The Pioneer DVR-104 is an EIDE optical drive of the standard 
5-and-a-bit inch form-factor 
<http://www.digit-life.com/articles/pioneerdvr104/>, so any cheap 
optical drive from a PC shop will fit.

I was surprised to see that desktop PC drives (as opposed to the 
smaller laptop CD drives) were squeezed into the iLamps, but I guess 
they're cheaper - low-end Macs seem very cunningly constructed to use 
cheap components, and this can make 'em difficult to work on... but 
not, it seems, in this case. I have August & September 2002 service 
manuals for the iLamp & the 17" iLamp respectively - let me know by 
private email which one you need - but it looks like about 8 or 10 torx 
screws to get it out (4 on the base plate & some more holding the drive 
in).

Any standard desktop PC optical drive will _fit_ the iLamp, then, but 
not all will be recognised by the iApps. Replacing it with another 
DVR-104 would obviously be ideal, but although they were popular when 
they came out (as long ago as 2002?) they're not a current model. I've 
been very happy with Pioneer 106 & 108 superdrives, but I'm also happy 
with Patchburn so have no idea their iApp compatibility.

As ever the best place to check for iApp compatibility is 
<http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/>, specifically 
<http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/search.drivedb.lasso>. I'm not 
going to go through all the reader reports there, but you should be 
able to find a drive that'll work.

Stroller.