I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but I just saw this article yesterday at XLR8yourmac.com
Info on Non-Pioneer Superdrive in recent iMac G4s (DVD-R/-RW plus DVD-RAM?) About a month or so ago I had heard that some new iMac G4s had non-Pioneer DVD-R/RW drives - a reader with one of these just sent an email with more info:
" Hey Mike ...
Just wanted to let you know that Apple has changed the SuperDrive in the latest shipping iMacs. I just bought a 17" iMac LCD straight from Apple's Developer Connection (we're Select developers at work) and I was surprised to see that Mac OS 9.2.2's Apple System Profiler identified the drive as
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DVD-R/CD-RW
Driver version: 1.4.8
Mac OS partitions: 0
Removable media: Yes
Vendor: HL-DT-ST
Revision Number: D02D
Product ID: DVD-RW GCA-4020B
Apple disc burning: Supported
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Depending on who you believe, "HL-DT-ST" is either Hitachi or GoldStar in Korea - I'm not sure which.
A few Google searches revealed that this drive does DVD-R, DVD-RW *and* DVD-RAM! And, supposedly, the CD-R burning speeds are 12x, which is apparently faster than the previous Pioneer SuperDrives. (I can't personally verify this myself, not knowing the specs of the Pioneer A03/A04)
(Pioneer DVR-104/A04 and 103/A04 have a 8x/4x max (CDR/CDRW) burn speed rating.-Mike)
The only place I could find on the Mac Web that mentioned this new development is a 5-day old article on MacWelt.DE, the German Mac site.
Regards,
- Greg E"
About a dozen readers wrote in reply to this post mentioning LG or Hitachi links, etc. - another iMac G4 owner sent info from the label on the drive:
"FYI, I'll read off the label on a superdrive taken out of 17" iMac delivered approx. 3 weeks ago (yep, I've opened the iMac to take a closer look):
HðL Data Storage
CD-RW / DVD-R/RW DRIVE
MODEL No. GCA-4020B
DRIVE REV. A1
manufactured SEPTEMBER 2002
Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Inc.
(...), Tokyo, Japan
MADE IN JAPAN
I tried to look up tech. specs of this GCA-4020B on the web, but got nowhere so far.
Cheers,
Jan"
