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Superdrive Firmware Update 2.1 hosed your DVD-RW? Here's howto restore it.

I have successfully restored the firmware on a UJ-857 that was hosed following the infamous Apple Superdrive Firmware Update 2.1, thanks to the procedure & flashing utility posted by "ben11" on http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=42953&sid=7a19b1238543a5e4a43d12770bbd27c1
Please read the instructions carefully before proceeding.

Hello,

+After some private message exchanges it seems I was able to help some people in this situation (inclduing the original poster). I wrote a simple utility to perform a very basic flash to the drive - doing that may be able to recover the situation, but my flash utility performs almost no checks and is generally much more basic than the framework which, for example, the standard Apple Superdrive updaters have used.+

+So, if your drive is in a similar situation this may be able to help. But only try if you feel you've exhausted every other possibility, such as having the drive replaced. This flash process may not work for you, or in the worst case it could conceivably leave your drive is a worse state than before. It is of coursed not endorsed by anybody, in particular not Apple nor the drive manufacturer (or anybody at rpc1.org either).+

+As I wrote, compared to the standard updaters this utility makes few checks on the drive status - so unless your drive has really lost its standard operating firmware, often because of an interrupted flash, don't use this rather than a more featured updater.+

+Simple flash utility archive:+

+ http://rapidshare.com/files/57312123/SimpleFlash.zip.html+

+There is the terminal based utility (and source code) - along with copies of the HAEA, HBEA, KBVB, KCVB (RPC1 patched) firmwares for the UJ-857 and UJ-857D.+

_+Basic Instructions+_
+You need to download the "SimpleFlash.zip" file, unpack it and then run it using the terminal. e.g. assuming you have downloaded the archive file to your desktop you can unpack like this:+

+ben11s-computer:~ ben11$ cd Desktop+
+ben11s-computer:~/Desktop ben11$ unzip SimpleFlash.zip+
+ben11s-computer:~/Desktop ben11$ cd SimpleFlash+

+to use the utility you start it using ONE of the following commands:+

+./simple_flash 0 UJ857-HAEA-MBP-rpc1.dat+

or

+./simple_flash 0 UJ857-HBEA-MB-rpc1.dat+

or

+./simple_flash 0 UJ857D-KBVB-MB-rpc1.dat+

or

+./simple_flash 0 UJ857D-KCVB-MBP-rpc1.dat+

+(choose according to the firmware you need, see below)+

+It will prompt you to answer if you want to continue - to which you can type 'yes' or 'y', if you want to go on. The flash should start and will take about 30 seconds after which the utility should say "Finished". At this point I recommended you restart your Mac. If all has gone well your drive should be responding again.+

_+Choosing the Firmware+_
+The firmware included are the ones that the "Apple Superdrive 2.1" update offered for Matshita drives - except the ones in this archive have RPC1 patches. If you don't want RPC1 you could go back to standard firmware using the updaters posted in other threads on this forum after your drive is responding again.+

+In principal the utility would also flash other matshita UJ-8xx drives, but suitable firmware data files are not included for them.+

+HAEA, HBEA are for UJ-857+
+KBVB, KCVB are for UJ-857D+

+If your drive previously had:+

+HAC1 or HAE4 use HAEA+
+HBE4 use HBEA+
+KBV9 use KBVB+
+KCV9 use KCVB+

+If you don't know the previous firmware revision you had then: As far as I know firmware revisions HAEA & KCVB are used in the Macbook Pro, HBEA & KBVB are used in the Macbook. Choose according to which model of mac and which model of drive you have.+

+The optical drive should not accept a firmware corresponding the wrong drive model, but for a given model the various revisions may have slight differences, perhaps because of different physical constraints on the hardware - so try to pick the appropriate revision.+

+Good luck.+

MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Nov 22, 2007 7:49 PM

73 replies

Feb 15, 2008 1:12 AM in response to Hemant Kamat

Ben11 saved my 857D super drive! if ben11 can do it you guys from Apple should correct it via a firware update!

Feb 15, 2008 2:02 PM in response to Hemant Kamat

Here is a copy of something I posted on another "Oh my god, my lousy superdrive is ruining my life" thread, but it was hidden at the bottom of the heap after about a hundred other posts. I've repeated it here in the hope it might possibly be of use to someone:

I have problems getting my MBP "super"drive to read some DVDs - mostly home-burned ones. I (luckily) did NOT install the dreaded firmware update, so this advice MIGHT be useless. Here's my situation: Insert disc. A bit of whirring, some low-pitched humming like the drive is trying to do something but failing, then eventually spits the disc out.

THE SOLUTION:
Put disc in. Drive starts going through the motions. Drum your fingers quite hard (like you're tapping your fingers on a desk to a song, except a little harder) on the area where the drive is, just to the right of the trackpad. Keep doing this (it normally takes about 5-10 seconds) until the drive spins up and lo and behold, there's your disc on the desktop, working perfectly.

Please post any positive or negative results on this forum - I'm curious to see if it's just my (non-firmware updated) machine's problem, or if I've found the holy grail to cure many thousands of people's woes brought on by this uncaring marketing corporation.

....or solution 2:
Get a MacBook Air. No pesky drive at all to get in the way of your life. Sorry - iLife. Or some other MacMarketingspeak.

MacBook Pro 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo 2GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Feb 15, 2008 11:23 PM in response to hellopaul2

Wow...My drive hasn't been working for months, and it's out of warranty. SInce my wife has a working MBP Optical Drive, I just use hers. I tried the finger tapping thing, and for the first time in months, my drive is playing a DVD movie as I type this. How did you possibly figure out that solution? It worked for me. I hope it will work for others as well. Many, many thanks for posting that suggestion.

Best,

Sam

Feb 16, 2008 6:10 AM in response to TWisniewski

Did you find out how to cope with the "open for read error" result when trying to run "./simple_flash 0 UJ857-KBVB-MBP-rpc1.dat".

I was very glad to find the fix to the superdrive/firmware problem but unlike others whose drives have been saved I can't get the file to run.

Do you know how to get past the "open for read error" result? Does anyone?

Thanks.

Feb 16, 2008 6:14 AM in response to TWisniewski

Feb 18, 2008 12:47 PM in response to Hemant Kamat

does anyone know of a revised flash to work with Leopard? My superdrive occassionally reads cds, sometimes writes dvds, and very rarely successfully writes cds. Is there an update to Ben11's fix that will work with Leopard?
Thanks alot, I am excited to give this a shot!

Feb 18, 2008 1:26 PM in response to Hemant Kamat

For Leopard, can I use Ben11 Simple Flash if I do this first? Or will this following solution only work for the region firmware flashes. The following was posted from another site:

"terminus
New Member
Joined: 03 Jan 2008
Posts: 4
Location: Perth, Australia

PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:30 am Post subject: Leopard firmware update confirmed working! Reply with quote
Guess what people, I have done it! I have gotten the firmware update to work on Leopard (in my case: the ZB0E firmware). My drive was previously region locked, and is now confirmed region free.

How was it done? First, I determined that the updater that was checking for version 10.3.9 or 10.4.6+ of Mac OS X was getting this information from the file /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist. So I simply edited this file to change my version of Mac OS X from 10.5.1 to 10.4.9.

Then I ran the update utility for my firmware. The first time, it bailed out, and DVD Info X confirmed that it had failed. I ran it again, and this time it succeeded. I'm not sure why it was necessary to run it twice, or whether this will be necessary for everyone.

Then I changed SystemVersion.plist back again, and rebooted like the update utility told me to. I then ran DVD Info X again which confirmed that I now had a region free drive. I have successfully played disks from regions 1, 2 and 4 to test.

Of course, DVD Player still starts up when I insert a disk, and if the disk is a different region than DVD Player is set to, it prompts me to change region (though I'm back to 5 available changes, up from 3). There are already documented ways to get around this. The Region X utility is one of them, though that doesn't seem to work on Leopard. So instead, I just installed a Preference Pane called RCDefaultApp that enabled me to change the default DVD player to VNC, which as others have noted doesn't check the disk region."

jack0000

Level 1

0 points

Feb 19, 2008 4:03 PM in response to blakegeee

After the 2.1 superdrive update, my drive reads some dvd's, spits out blank dvd- and wont burn blank dvd+ and will not even attemp to burn a cd!!

So i tried the above method!! didn't work unfortunately.

So i then went back to 10.4.6 using the install discs shipped with the macbook pro.

Now i can burn dvd- and cds, but it still gives me a media error when trying to burn dvd+

Next i installed all updates using software update! Now the drive will not burn any dvd or cd at all and is spitting out all dvd- discs.

So i've now gone back to 10.4.6 AGAIN!!

When i originally got the macbook pro it would burn all discs so this is not exactly a cure, plus im stuck on 10.4.6, im hoping maybe if i update to Leopard from 10.4.6 the drive will still keep working, but alas i've no copy of Leopard to try this with!

Anyone fancy trying it????

Feb 19, 2008 8:23 PM in response to jack0000

My drive is a piece of crap. I've tried flashing it, to no avail. My drive likes to spin DVDs and then spit them right back out after a couple failed attempts to read. If I can get the DVD playing, it'll generally play for about 10 mins and then DVD Player will read "skipping over damaged area" and freeze up. I'm running Leopard 10.5.2 on a 1st gen MBP. Anyone know how to fix this thing without having to downgrade?

Thanks

Feb 19, 2008 10:29 PM in response to Freestyle101

2 posts up, there is a possible solution, to use ben11's simple flash, but adjusting your osx version number first.

Feb 20, 2008 12:55 AM in response to blakegeee

Sorry couldn't find this updated fix, could you post a link please?

Thanks

Feb 20, 2008 7:57 AM in response to Freestyle101

the 8th post on this page...

Feb 28, 2008 2:29 PM in response to Sam Blankenship

I'm very glad that someone has benefited from my finger-tapping SuperDrive fix.

I discovered it when at my wit's end. I have often used physical violence as a last resort against uncooperative computers with some success. I used to work with a very early PowerMac (when they were brand new and expensive, around 1994 I guess) which was supposedly for digital video. To get video into the thing, it was packed with an assortment of video cards, dozens of system extensions and a handful of control panels. After many weeks of tweaking with every setting known to man, removing/swapping/reseating cards, our frustration at the thing's inability to do anything reliably and the hopeless 'support contract' we'd purchased, left us with the only one option - to kick the cr@p out of the thing. Not a gentle nudge, but really hard kicks which leave big boot marks. This worked. The Mac only needed about one good hard 'reboot' per month to remind it who was boss. It gave us many years of service - or should that be servitude?

So the logical conclusion when the SuperDrive was not behaving, just show it - physically - who's boss. Luckily it only needed a relatively gentle reminder of what I am capable of.

Feb 28, 2008 2:39 PM in response to Freestyle101

Have you tried my magic finger-tapping drive fix a few posts up? No re-installs, no downgrades, none of that silly techno-computery nonsense. Try the simple things first - if it doesn't work, smack it until it does.

Put disc in, while it tries to spin up, drum your fingers quite hard on the area to the right of the trackpad where the drive is, and the disc will mount and work perfectly. If you're lucky.

Feb 28, 2008 6:48 PM in response to Hemant Kamat

I have Leopard and I want to do Ben11's Firmware Flash, so I tried this;

"the updater that was checking for version 10.3.9 or 10.4.6+ of Mac OS X was getting this information from the file /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist. So I simply edited this file to change my version of Mac OS X from 10.5.1 to 10.4.9."

But when i try to edit this, it says I dont have the permission to do so. I "Get Info" for this file, and change my permissions to allow me (the admin) to "Read & Write" but it still tells me I dont have permission to make changes. ***???

Does anybody know what I have to do to edit the .plist file?

Superdrive Firmware Update 2.1 hosed your DVD-RW? Here's howto restore it.