I heard a rumour

TimR

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that Tiger was going to give support for many aftermarket drives. Is there any truth to this, and will it be able to update firmware as well or are we still SOL unless we also have a pc for some of the other (ie, not pioneer or sony) drives??

Just curious. Installed a LG GSA-4163b drive in QS 933, very, very impressed. Fast, so quiet you can't even hear it, and dvd-ram to boot (that is amazing, not sure why its not more popular). No way to upgrade firmware without a pc though, it seems...

Hope this is the right forum to post this.

Thanks
Tim
 
And: Take a look at Patch Burn 3 (-> versiontracker.com), that'll do what you want, probably.
 
Sorry, yes I meant CD/DVD drives. Patchburn 3 allows burning out of iApps and works good but I am looking for a way to update the drive firmware wihout resorting to installing in a pc for that process since all the updates are pc only files.

Was hoping tiger might make this whole scene easier...

Thanks
Tim
 
It depends if the company writes a firmware updater for the Mac. They are usually just PC EXE programs, so it's up to the maker of the drive.
 
TimR said:
Sorry, yes I meant CD/DVD drives. Patchburn 3 allows burning out of iApps and works good but I am looking for a way to update the drive firmware wihout resorting to installing in a pc for that process since all the updates are pc only files.

Was hoping tiger might make this whole scene easier...

Thanks
Tim

Please write the manufacturer and let them know your desire. That's the best way to get support going. Then tell other Mac OS X users how wonderful the drive is and give them the link to e-mail the mfg as well. I for one love to hear about excellent dvd writers since that is I work with small video productions.
 
Tiger won't change anything basic about DVD-writer firmware. Where did you hear the rumour?
 
TimR said:
that Tiger was going to give support for many aftermarket drives. Is there any truth to this, and will it be able to update firmware as well or are we still SOL unless we also have a pc for some of the other (ie, not pioneer or sony) drives??

Just curious. Installed a LG GSA-4163b drive in QS 933, very, very impressed. Fast, so quiet you can't even hear it, and dvd-ram to boot (that is amazing, not sure why its not more popular). No way to upgrade firmware without a pc though, it seems...

Hope this is the right forum to post this.

Thanks
Tim

I think you heard wrong. Apple would be shooting itself in the foot if they did this.
 
On the other hand my LaCie DVD burner now works so I am happy. I just hope it continues to work in Tiger.
 
Why shouldn't it. If Apple _starts_ to support your external burner, it usually means that the actual drive in your LaCie box is one that Apple also uses in other devices. So support for it is granted. And for all others, there's Patch Burn. What does Apple System Profiler tell you about the device? Make, type etc.? My external DVD±RW is recognised as a NEC device, so no chance in Apple supporting it out of the box. But with Patch Burn: Not a problem.
 
fryke said:
Why shouldn't it. If Apple _starts_ to support your external burner, it usually means that the actual drive in your LaCie box is one that Apple also uses in other devices. So support for it is granted.

Because it is supported by LaCie, not Apple. Disc Burning shows up as "Vendor Supported" in System Profiler. I have no reason to expect it not to be supported, it just is not yet. This makes sense since Tiger has not been released yet. LaCie has lobbied for quite some time for vendor supported burning in Mac OS X, I can't see them abandoning it now that it works.

EDIT: if your NEC drive is a LaCie D2 Firewire drive or one of the Porsche drives there is a good chance Lacie does support burning for it on the Mac as of 24 Jan 2005. By this I mean in Disk Utility, finder, iTunes, etc... not just Toast.
 
I cannot be sure where I heard the rumour as I spent several hours one day seeing if i could find a way to update the firmware without installing it in a pc first...somewhere in my travels there was a post that basicallly said 10.4 was going to have native support for way more devices than it does now and I was stupid enough to not bookmark it (I was looking for current info, anyway).

I'm not sure how supporting a variety of drives would be shooting itself in the foot. It might lessen their grip on selling drives (and your wallet), but would help alleviate that old "If i buy I mac I can't upgrade without hassles" proprietary scene which may actually increase their sales. Not arguing, just repeating what I have heard.

Yes I know pioneer and sony make good drives, supported better by apple or the vendor, but I wanted this drive for a variety of reasons. I love DVD-RAM...yeah, yeah, I know.....

I wrote LG a very nice letter about their drive, and suggested that perhaps the time needed to write some code for OS X would probably pay off as Mac owners tend to support those who support us. Overall market share is small, but still millions of computers, and right now its only covered by a few drives...plus this drive with native support would be unbeatable. I have never heard another drive so quiet.

And while I am on the topic, sometimes when I download something to the desktop it shows up -just for a moment -as an .exe file, which disappears to be followed by a .dmg file or whatever. Whats up with that? Virtual pc doing something odd?

Thanks guys for all the information and debate, its always good.

Later
Tim
 
That's when an .exe file is called for server action (a cgi-application on a Windows server). The download first has the name of the cgi, but then alters to the file actually downloaded. I.e.: The URL might be "http://some.server.com/cgi-bin/download.exe?2343289098923.dmg" which _should_ result in blabla.dmg on your Desktop. Which it does. :)
 
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