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Mods to force Master Mode

Mods to force Master Mode

PB G4 w/Pioneer K04L
(Note: As mentioned in several drive database reports here earlier this year, many Pioneer K04L (slotted 8x ‘superdrive’) when used in systems like the Powerbook G4 that have a separate IDE cable/bus for the Optical drive ran as a Slave instead of the normal Master setting. Reportedly the drives were set for Slave mode in firmware (although some batches of K04Ls may be set to Master, many were not.) For systems like the Mac Mini, or Cube, Slave setting for optical drives is typical as they share a single cable/bus for the Optical drive and Hard Drive but for Powerbook G4 use, Master is preferred. This reader article shows mods he made to the PB G4 optical drive cable to force Master mode on the drive.-Mike)

——————————————————————————– Mike, Thanks for the great site! I’m hoping this info on the DVR-K04 will be very helpful to everyone. I own a PowerBook G4 (DVI) 800 running OS X 10.4.1. I finally decided it was time for an internal DVD-R/RW drive. I am a big fan of Pioneer drives, so despite the troubles others have listed here (i.e. some earlier drive database reports on problems with slave set K04L drives in some macs like Powerbook G4s, although slave is correct for Mac Minis, Cubes, etc.-Mike), I opted to buy a Pioneer DVR-K04. I also decided to save a little money and purchase from a PC parts vendor. I received the drive with the black bezel installed. Before installing in my PowerBook, I wanted to test the drive to see if it was operational. I was also conccerned about the master/slave issue. I installed the drive in an external firewire case using a slimline CD adapter I purchased with the drive. My case requires drives be set to master to work. The drive functioned flawlessly, so I assume the drive is set to master. Next test, install the drive in a old Gateway laptop. It works fine, but is seen as slave. (The Gateway’s original CD-ROM was also a slave.)



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Finally, I install the drive in my PowerBook. I decided to leave the black bezel in place. I see no real reason to remove it. The drive fits fine with it on. (I’m surprised it fit with a bezel on the front. I’d have removed it personally as PB G4, Cube, etc. slotted drives don’t normally have a bezel on the drive.-Mike) I reassemble my PowerBook and fire it up. The DVR-K04 is seen as slave! It is reported as “Apple shipped/supported”, but I can’t burn from the Finder. I get an error about “unsupported device”. It won’t boot from an optical disc with the “C” key held down, but it will boot with the option key. Burns with Toast seem to work fine.

I was I little depressed about the “slave” issue. I really don’t think these drives are hard coded as “master” or “slave”. If anything, they are coded as “cable select”. I did some research on the web, and here on xlr8yourmac.com, and I came across this article: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/PB_G3/oem_combo_drives/notebook_combo_drive.html (that’s the article from 2001 here on PB G3 Expansion bay drive swaps – which has a note/photo on forcing master mode via pin 45/47 bridging.-Mike)

I did a Google search to find a pinout of the 50-pin JAE connector used on slimline CD and DVD drives.

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