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Blu Ray for MAC Pro’s
Hi –
just some reference info, for those of you that want to save some money.I just installed the new MCETech Blu Ray DVD-R for the MAC Pro. MCETech doesn’t make anything. It’s off the shelf products that they package, and dramatically mark up. It requires no driver software (other than Roxio Toast, which you need anyway for a MAC Pro to do Blu Ray burning).
The actual drive is the (get ready, this is a mother of a model #) –
HL-DT-ST BD-RE HHW-H20This is a SATA drive, which is incompatible with the MAC Pro that still uses a parallel ATA (IDE) interface. MCETech simply provides you with the Addonics ADSAIDE IDE to SATA bridge card, which is $19.99 on Amazon. Nothing is even scratched out, or relabeled to hide the original manufacturers of this stuff.
It looks like if you do this by yourself, you will also need a short parallel IDE cable to connect between the Addonics board and the short Apple internal cable that dangles off the back of the native CD. There are no installation instructions with the MCETech drive (neither are there any instructions on their website), so I failed when I first did the install, because I could not figure out how to make one drive the MASTER CD, and the other the SLAVE CD. After putting on my reading glasses, I saw that there was a jumper on the Apple (Sony) DVD-R, and I moved the jumper to SLAVE, and everything worked fine. After searching at home for the Addonics card, I saw that Addonics has detailed instructions on their site, on how to make their adaptor either the MASTER or the SLAVE device.
Considering that MCETech doesn’t give you any installation instructions (even on their website), you might as well do it yourself anyway.
Bob Zelin
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15 Replies
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[Bob Zelin] “HL-DT-ST BD-RE HHW-H20”
that looks like its a Hitachi made drive.
very similar part number to the Hitachi drives some
G5 pci-e models got when pioneer was running out
of inventory.Thanks for the heads up bob.
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FastMac’s burner is plug and play. I highly recommend their units. I’m sure it’s a repackaged device, but it has worked here and their tech support has been great. We just had an issue with ours and when we could not figure out what was wrong in one day, they replaced it overnight.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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I put in a Panasonic SW-5583 ($419) it is the same mechanism that FastMac uses in their drive. They just rebrand it and charge $100 more for theirs. But I wouldn’t buy any thing from that company as they are so rude.
But besides the point. This drive installs in 5 seconds using one of the two spare SATA ports on the Mac Pros.
Warren
Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905email: warren@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.babyboompictures.comhttps://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/knitwits
https://www.atomfilms.com/film/family_xmas.jsp -
[Warren Eig] “But I wouldn’t buy any thing from that company as they are so rude.”
That’s interesting. Complete opposite of the experiences I’ve had with them to date.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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[Bob Zelin] “This is a SATA drive, which is incompatible with the MAC Pro that still uses a parallel ATA (IDE) interface. “
Bob, there are two additional SATA ports on the Mac Pro motherboard.
Sean
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IS there a Blu-Ray drive that would work in the internal bay of a Quad G5? Perhaps I’m better off getting an external FW-800 model?
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Any BR player should work in a G5. If it’s SATA, use an IDE adapter.
Sean
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[Scott Thomas] “IS there a Blu-Ray drive that would work in the internal bay of a Quad G5?”
The FastMac unit will work if you have a 2nd Optical bay on the front.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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this is a better answer for Scott, because I went thru the same thing. you get a computer, you simply want to plug in a BluRay drive. So you order one – and it doesnt’ fit. Your initial reaction is “oh my God, what do I do now !”.
This is what happened to me in March. I ordered a MAC Pro, and the Pioneer BluRay Burner – BDR202. I searched google before I did it, without enough knowlege. I received the equipment, and tried to install the BDR202, and it would not adapt – because the “new” Pioneer BDR202 has a SATA interface, and the new MAC Pro’s all have the old PATA interface in the drive slots. When you don’t have any cables, adaptors, or knowlege (as I did in March 2008), all you do is say “S%$#, this doesn’t work”. When I called Pioneer in March 2008, the product manager said that they were not supporting Apple, and that my only hope was to find an “old” BDR-101, which had the PATA IDE interface.
The point of my post, is that you can use ANY BluRay drive, if you have an adaptor (like the Addonics). When you see these products (like MCETech) – all they are doing is providing you with a cheap, off the shelf Blu Ray DVD-R, with the correct adaptor (which turns out to be $19.99 retail).
As far as the “I will use an external blu ray burner” – this is the SAME STORY. Back in March 2008, I did the same thing – I got a Lacie Blu Ray burner – which turned out to be the Matsuda Blu Ray (Panasonic) in a Lacie metal box with a SATA to Firewire interface board. This is how they make an “external” Blu Ray burner.
Again, the point of this post (and many of my posts), is that you don’t have to spend $800 to get a $200 product to work.
Bob Zelin
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Thank you all for your insight!
The G5 has only the single optical bay, and it seems that there are more and more SATA interface drives and fewer and fewer PATA ones. I would rather leave a PCIe slot open for my future video card purchase (Thinking Decklink HD Extreme) rather than have it taken up with a card just to get an extra SATA port.
I also don’t want to remove the Apple drive from the system. I’ve done that with other systems I’ve had and it sometimes causes MacOSX to not want to burn disks. Perhaps MacOS isn’t as petulant about not seeing an Apple drive as it once was?
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