Your external superdrive won't work... Try this!

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Level 1

8 points

Your external superdrive won't work... Try this!

I searched for a way to get my apparently DOA Superdrive to work... user quetzal_7 had an answer that worked. I pasted my response to his answer below:

Thankyou quetzal_7!

I have an iMac 24-inch, early 2009 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running OS X 10.8.4 and the internal superdrive is kaput (apparently these optical drives had some problems... the cost of having it fixed out of warranty prompted me to get an $80 external instead).

I purchased an external Superdrive (MD564ZM/A) and had the same problem, the external seemed DOA (but I heard a faint soft "click" whenever I plugged it into the USB so there were apparent, if faint, signs of life...

...So I searched and tried the unplug/replug/reboot (with various keys pressed upon reboot just in case) to no avail. Searched more on this forum, and found your post.

SO... I tried the sudo nvram boot-args="mbasd=1" terminal command, hard reboot then soft reboot (no need for holding down "option" or checking after hard reboot to see if the drive was working... I forgot both those steps and it still worked.)

I have both optical drives showing in the hardware info Disc Burning device list now and the external actually works fine.

(imagines the terminal command as some sort of spoken-in-a-low-voice incantation... and hey, presto!)

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Aug 28, 2013 5:44 PM

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Answer 1

LowLuster

Level 6

12,105 points

Aug 28, 2013 10:06 PM in response to actiasluna

All you have to do is buy any brand external that connects by USB port and it will work on all Mac computers.

No need to spend $80 on the Apple branded drive, most all external DVD drive sell for around $30, and no need to HACK your Mac to make it work.

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Answer 2

MichelPM

Level 10

80,958 points

Aug 29, 2013 7:23 AM in response to LowLuster

If you want to keep replacing an optical drive very so often, I guess spending $30 or $40 dollars is a deal.

I prefer spending the money on a quality optical drive that will last more than say two years before replacing.

I don'i like Apple's own optical drive, but have a tray loading optical drive that I paid a lot for, but has worked rock solid for more than 6 years.

To each his/her own.

😉

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Answer 3

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Aug 29, 2013 8:19 AM in response to actiasluna

This is a hack intended to allow a MacBook Air SuperDrive (thus the "mbasd") to work with Macs that otherwise don't support it. (Whether it also applies to the Apple USB SuperDrive is unclear.)

The details (& a potentially more reliable way to implement it) are here. Be sure to read the comments as well as the article because there is more info there.

As LowLuster said, you don't have to use an Apple-branded SuperDrive; other USB-powered ones should "just work" as long as they don't demand more power than a standard USB port can supply.

This is definitely a "use at your own risk" hack -- there is no telling what the 'tweaks related to USB power management' might do when (for example) multiple USB devices are attached to an unsupported Mac.

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