SuperDrive Conflicts with HD, must read before upgrade!

yoffie · New Member Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 8

I bought a superdrive Matshita UJ-845-B(http://panasonic.co.jp/mke/en/device/storage/dmd/dmd_845.html). However, my mini failed to recognize it. I cannot find the drive under System Profiler. It can suck in disks, so it is powered.

I plug back the original drive, and it works fine.

Do anyone here can help? Crying or Very sad

devo · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 1:20 pm Post subject:

Out of curiosity have you tried the drive in another machine?

yoffie · New Member Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 8

Do not have a suitable system to try on. Crying or Very sad

Does it seem that I bought a bad drive? If so I will go back and ask for exchange.

devo · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 2:41 pm Post subject:

I mean there always is a chance that the drive is bad. I would try re-installing it and if you have no luck return it for another. Sorry not much help!

yoffie · New Member Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 8

After beg for my girl friend. She let me open her Powerbook G4 and install the drive. You know what it works fine!!!!

I found that optical drives in powerbook use seperate ATA bus, while Mac Mini share the single ATA bus with harddrive.

I guess maybe the superdrive is set as "master" hence conflict with the Harddrive also set as master of the ATA bus.

I do not find any where on the superdirve to change such settings. Therefore I decide to change the setting of my harddrive to slave. I will let you know if it gona work.

yoffie · New Member Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 8

HI ALL,

Finally I have some good new today. After I soldered (I do not have any jumper cap) the jumper of the harddrive and changed the status to slave, the Mac Mini recognize new superdrive smoothly! System profiler recognize it as MASHITA DVD-RAM UJ-845S, as someone mentioned in other posts. After use PatchBurn, everything runs smoothly.

So, the problem was caused by both harddrive and superdrive trying to claim as Master device on the single ATA Bus Mini has.

Hope this could help anyone who might come into such problem as mine.

BTW, does anyone knows a better way to change the master/slave status of Superdrive please do follow up this post. It is really difficult to find a jumper cap for 2.5" hard-drive nowadays (most of them ship without one) and soldering seems to be difficult for many people.

Thanks devo and this site.[/b]

devo · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 8:36 pm Post subject:

Glad to hear your drive is working! I didn't even think about jumpers or the DVD drive being on the same ATA bus as the HD. O well maybe your post will help someone else out!

Later


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