Richard Mondello

This fix has been proven temporary. Many users have used it and had a working drive. After reboots, however, the drive firmware is corrupted again. Only try this method as a last resort.

A more detailed post on this issue is coming soon.

A little backstory… Many months ago, Apple released a software update titled “SuperDrive Update 2.1″ for MacBook and MacBook Pro computers. Unfortunately, the update was flawed. It bricked many drives, and severely limited the function of others. Here’s a quick article on the matter:

Following close on the heels of our recent report that Apple’s SuperDrive Firmware Update 2.1 for MacBook and MacBook Pro is causing widespread failure of optical drives (as witness, for example, the plethora of reports on Apple’s own discussion boards), Apple has apparently pulled the update from circulation. The previous information URL … now leads nowhere. Neither does the download link.

My drive was damaged in that it no longer would recognize CD-R media (blank CDs). Back in July, I sent my MacBook Pro to Apple for a SuperDrive replacement, and they sent it back with a new installation of Tiger. Although I was outraged, that fixed my problem for a few months - until I installed Mac OS X Leopard. Again, my drive would not recognize cd-r media, and would report voltage errors in disk utility.

Again, Apple has shown us the company that they are. They refuse to officially acknowledge the issue to spite the outcry of thousands of users whose computers have been damaged.

Luckily, a very talented hacker (in a good sense) has released a tool to fix the problem. In this thread on Apple’s discussion boards, someone re-posted the fix. In hopes of spreading the remedy, I’m reposting it here.

“ben11″ wrote:

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.

Ben’s fix worked on my SuperDrive just fine. I can now see and burn all the types of media that I’m suppose to be able to.

If you’re someone who came across this post looking for a solution, I wish you luck. However, I make no guarantees that this remedy will work and am not responsible for any damage done to your drive.

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