Getting an external DVD burner to work with OS X

Sharknose

Sharknose

Sharknose

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18 Oct 2002
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Folks.

I have a slight technical glitch with my external DVD burner. I got the burner when I still had a PC (and I wasn't fully planning on migrating to OS X), so I forgot to check Mac compatibilty.

The drive was purchased in Japan (it's this one or if you prefer that in sort-of-English ). Looking at it, it's basically a NEC ND-4550A that has been packaged up as an external drive with a USB interface.

Now, my question is, are there any drivers out there (some form of generic ones) that I can use to make it work on my MBP.... or do I need to flog off this piece of kit and get something new.

If I was going to get something new, what I want is something that allows me to play region free (since the MBP drive is not region free short of flashing the firmware).

Cheers,
 
The Mac should pick up on it just fine.. but you will need something like Toast to burn things as I believe the Apple stuff checks to see if it's an "Apple" drive.

Does it not pick up on it at all?
 
check if its shows up in system profiler, you should be able to use it to burn things, tried googling drivers for it, brings a number of intresting results.

All kinds of patches and firmware updates that might make your drive work in mac os x

try searching for "NEC ND-4550A mac os x drivers"
 
I'm a muppet!!

My brain was in 'Windows' mode... so when I plugged in the drive and powered up, I was expecting to see the drive icon appear on the desktop.
..... No wonder nothing happened, there was no disk in the drive.

I've just fired it up with CDs, so panic over.
Next problem though is that the drive is still Region Encoded. Not too much of a problem, as it's Japanese. That means all my Japanese and UK DVDs work. My MBP itself is Australian, so it's own Superdrive is Region 4. Means I still have a couple of US Region 1 DVDs that I can't play. Hmmm, need to work out how to fix that.
 
lol...about the DVD region thing, you can use VLC to watch DVDs without changing the region, I've heard though it doesn't work on Intel Macs

so you might have to give it a try for yourself
 
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