XBox HD-DVD-ROM On Mac And PC


HD-DVD drives are getting closer, but aren’t terribly easy to come buy – yet. [Dan] over at uneasy silence let us know that he cracked open an XBox 360 HD DVD Drive and plugged it into a windows box and a mac. With a light application of some drivers, they got the drive working pretty easily – the snag? You’ll need a mini-ata adapter if you want to mount it internally. (And there’s apparently no HD-DVD software support for mac… yet.)

[you can just use it as a USB drive.]

21 thoughts on “XBox HD-DVD-ROM On Mac And PC

  1. You only need that adapter if you want to mount the drive internally or put it on the IDE bus.

    If you are content with using it over USB, then according to the article you just plug it in and load the drivers.

  2. Anyone find it interesting that the drive isnt SATA? Ok not that interesting, just that I would prefer a sata drive to an ide..

    It’s probably easier and cheaper to make an IDE to USB adapter, instead of sata to usb.

  3. this might not be a bad option for the early adopters, but I think I’ll hold off until I see what kind of prices a internal read only HD-DVD drive is going to level out at. 199 is pricey for no burning capabilities (granted HD-DVD is a new technology) but I’m content with DL-DVD until I can get the drive that will both read and write.

  4. I dont think that drive is SATA, the adapter picture shows a 40pin PATA connector. Comments on the site which hosts that HOWTO say its a mini ATAPI connector. Anyways you can get these adapters from old iMacs, they all use laptop optical drives and have adapter boards on them to give a normal 40 pin PATA connector.

  5. Drives are now $50 since HD-DVD support dropped my Mfg. (Toshiba). That makes this a nice, USB-powered DVD drive for general PC/Mac use, and possibly HD-DVD player (with proper drivers, haven’t tried it yet)

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