Fix for some SuperDrive failures
Back from the dead.
[Monday, February 4th]
Firmware updates are usually good things. They can, however, cause serious problems in some cases, rendering devices nonfunctional or spawning hardware incompatibility.
Such was the were the experiences of many MacBook and MacBook Pro users who have attempted to apply firmware updates for Apple's SuperDrives. The updates caused some drives to fail, generally with an inability to mount or read data from otherwise viable media.
In fact, Apple withdrew SuperDrive firmware update 2.1 after widespread reports of similar issues. Most affected users were forced to seek in our out-of-warranty replacement.
Now a user who goes by the name "ben11" has put together a small set of files that will rescue some drives from the non-burning, non-reading abyss. Note that if your Mac is still under warranty, you should seek service first -- this utility is not guaranteed to work, and may void you warranty. Only use this procedure if you've exhausted all other options.
As written by the package's author:
"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."
You can download the file here.
It includes a 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.
In order to use the utility, you need to download the "SimpleFlash.zip" file, unpack it and then run it using the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities. Move the "SimpleFlash.zip" file to the Desktop, then use the following commands to unpack it and navigate to the downloaded folder's root:
- cd Desktop
- unzip SimpleFlash.zip
- cd SimpleFlash
- ./simple_flash 0 UJ857-HAEA-MBP-rpc1.dat
- ./simple_flash 0 UJ857-HBEA-MB-rpc1.dat
- ./simple_flash 0 UJ857D-KBVB-MB-rpc1.dat
- ./simple_flash 0 UJ857D-KCVB-MBP-rpc1.dat
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.
The author provides this guide for choosing the firmware (based on drive model):
"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.
"If your drive previously had:"
- HAEA, HBEA are for UJ-857
- KBVB, KCVB are for UJ-857D
- 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."
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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