Site Menu  |  Project: BlueCube  |  ATI Radeon 7500 Install  |  Fan Install  |  The Family  |  Cooling the Radeon 7500  |  Slowing/quieting down the Fan  |  Heat Testing the G4 Cube  |  DealExpress.com NOT .BIZ  |  Superdrive DVR-105
 

Superdrive working on Cube Mod

by Rich C

 

Final Release

Revised 2/16/03



Getting a superdrive into a cube is probably one of the "Holy Grail" quests for many cube owners. There are a couple possibilities out there such as MCE technologies but none have yet to come through(there is debate as to wether a slot loading superdrive drive can operate properly and reliably in a vertical position), even the combo drive quest has been elusive from Fastmac.com the last time a read (this issue may have been resolved, click on link to the right to read the forum posts, click here).

So, instead of pursuing the slot loading DVD-R venture or even the Combo drive venture, I decided to use an external Pioneer DVR-105(the lastest, greatest, and fastest model as of this writing). There are quite a few advantages to using this method:

1. It's a whole lot cheaper, I picked up my Cendyne branded Pioneer DVR-105 from OfficeMax for $190 after rebate, you just can't beat that price for a 4x burner, it is less than half the price of the MCE slot loading drive which retails for a whopping $499.00, no thanks for a drive that will burn at half the speed of 2x(although the thought did cross my mind to put it into my TiBook).

2. When a faster external drive comes along, all that is necessary is to swap it out with the new one in no time, those drives will also be available faster and be cheaper than any slot loading drive.

3. The best reason of all, iDVD working on our Cube's of coarse!!! Because the drive is being hooked into the internal IDE cable the drive will be recognized by iDVD as an internally mounted Superdrive, which of coarse it is not. It will be mounted, if you like, in an external enclosure, even that's not necessary but it makes it look more asthetic.

4. Once the cables and been modified and run the possibilities are endless. I recently plugged an internal HD(be sure to set it to slave) into the cables I ran and used it as a second HD for backing up!

So, enough with the plenty of reasons. Lets get on with the mod!

 

 

Disclaimer/Warning: Informational/reference purposes only.

I am not responsible for any damage to yourself or your computer.

 


Tools and Parts:

 


 

   

Remove the cube from its enclosure and place as shown

Remove four corner screws indicated by red arrows

All screws are Torx-10 for this project


 

Turn cube as shown and remove the side top cover screws on both sides , see red arrows and note


 

Carefully lift off top cover while removing the power switch connector, see red circle and next picture


 

Note the orientation of the connector when putting the top cover back on


 

Remove two side posts as indicated by red arrows by pulling up as shown by green arrows Do the same for the optical drive cover


 

Here's what you get with side posts and drive cover removed


 

Remove both optical drive screws from both sides, see red arrows

Then carefully remove the drive by sliding upwards holding it by the corners only


 

Here's with the optical drive removed

 

Position the IDE cable as shown

  

Position the optical drive power cable as shown, note that mine is different wire color wise
because of Project: BlueCube, normally all wires are black in color

 

Re-install the optical drive, note that this step is optional, I originally did not reinstall my
optical drive, but decided to put it back after the completed mod. Leaving it out may
improve cooling and provide move space for other mods like ATI-9000 which
require the repositioning of the DC-DC card, just food for thought :)

 

Re-install the optical drive cover as shown with the IDE cable poking out and put the cube all back together

 

Install the cube back into its enclosure with the power cable and IDE cable hanging out as shown.

It's a tight fit but it will work, be sure to push down firmly and make sure the cube is secured

Now it's time to modify the 6" IDE extension cable that was ordered from Digikey.com

Do not cut the cable like I have it, it is not necessary, the cable will also be different. Rev 2 of this mod

calls for a plug connector at both ends.

This is a picture of the IDE connector socket end, notice that pin 20 is not present, this is normal

Here is a picture of the IDE extension cable plug end, this end will plug into the

Cubes socket end, but it has to be modified as shown because of pin 20

The two ends will not mate with pin 20 in its normal location

Here's another angle, I used a hack saw blade to cut the plastic down to the base of the connector

then I just broke off the piece with pliers, then bent the pin down and out of the way, you may

have to modify both sides depending on the round IDE cable you get, it may not have pin 20 blocked

like the one in the Cube's IDE cable end

Here's a nice close up, there may be other ways to remove pin 20 but this is the one I chose

After modifying the 6" extension cable, plug it into the Cube's IDE cable and route it under the handle

to keep it up against the Cube's chassis. Note that this picture is a mock up of how it should look

because I modified my original 6" extension so it won't fit under the handle anymore. Like I said

Rev 2 mods are usually better



Time to make the power extension cable. I used a Y-Adaptor cable because that's what I had laying around.

I basically just cut the extra male end off and extended all four wires to the desired length which will vary

depending on how far you have the superdrive from your cube. The closer the better, my power cable ended

up being about 26".

Here is the final result

I then put the wires into split wire loom to protect and make it look better. The split loom is available from

radioshack, part number 278-1624

Now plug the power extension cable into the cubes optical drive power cable end

Next, plug the round IDE cable into the 6" extension cable from the previous steps, pictured here is the one I made,

you're better off buying the round IDE from your favorite computer retailer. I saw some nice cables at CompUSA

they came in 18" and 24" remember is shorter the better.

Now put the cube where it normally sits and plug all your cables back in, route the power cable and

the IDE cable to where the superdrive will sit

Speaking of superdrive, here's mine in it's enclosure along with it's piggybacking buddy, my DSL modem.

Like I said before the length of the cables will depend on where you put the drive so try to think ahead

Plug the IDE cable and power cables into the superdrive

If anyone is interested, the enclosure I used to house the superdrive is an old Apple SCSI CD 600e

It's a relic left over from my Powerbook Duo days, I'm glad I kept it :)

Remember when I said I hooked up an internal drive to the cables to perform a backup, here it is, my

original Cube HD, noisey little sucker but works great! No firewire enclosure or taking the Cube apart

needed, you can plug whatever IDE stuff you want in there

 

Here's the completed job, notice the IDE cable hanging down and if you look really hard you can

see the superdrive right behind my display

Here's a better picture of the IDE cable hanging down, I'm going to fix that one of these days

And here's the power cable hanging down and out

 

 

Conclusion

The drive works great with no problems so far. I've used it with Toast Titanium 5 to burn data cd's, I've used iTunes to burn music cds, the finder for burning data. I've played DVD's and audio CDs all without a hitch. And yes I've burned an iDVD 2 project. Overall I am very happy with the mod, since I don't relocate my Cube from where it sits the external drive doesn't bother me one bit.

All this work though didn't come without fustration, I originally used all flat IDE cables for the project which led to problems. The drive was recognized but was useless for reading or writing to any kind of disk. I later found out with the help of some GREAT people over a cubeowner.com that the maximum cable length allowed under the IDE specification is 18" total. My original cable was about 3-4 times that spec, no wonder it didn't work.

I did some google searching and found that if the flat cable is made round by cutting the individual strands of wire and then shielding it with foil or wire mesh and putting ferrite cores every 8 inches that the cable will work, and it did. Before I figured it all out I got so fustrated I almost gave up.

I had another problem also, originally I also used my external enclosure's power supply to power the drive instead of using the Cube's power wire, I thought running less wires out of the Cube would be better, but after putting the computer to sleep and upon waking up, the computer became uselessly slow. So if you're wondering about using that method don't.

Check out the forum post I made over at cubeowner.com/forums: SuperDrive working on my Cube.

 

Many thanks go out to everyone over at Cubeowner.com that helped and encouraged me with this lastest project.

And thanks to Kunga for editing the intro and conclusion.