Make A Universal Macbook Air Superdrive


For $99, Apple will happily sell you a slick USB superdrive (aka DVD burner) that only works with the MacBook Air. [tnkgrl] swapped out the USB-IDE interface with a generic $9 unit to make it work with everything else. The generic board required a few mods: relocating the crystal oscillator along with the amputation of its daughter-board that carried an external power connector, usb connector and some caps.

10 thoughts on “Make A Universal Macbook Air Superdrive

  1. That’s great. I like most of what Apple makes, but their unnecessary hardware lock ins are something that will always keep me from fully liking or supporting them. What is it about them that they feel it’s beneficial to them to lock their hardware down to being compatible only with their stuff in this way. I understand the logic behind not allowing OSX running on other hardware, but there’s absolutely no reason that this DVD drive should be compatible with only one machine. They seem to spend as much time making things sleek and functional as they do breaking cross-compatibility and the ability to use YOUR hardware as YOU see fit.

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.