Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

There's always a deep breath before a firmware update, be it motherboard or peripheral, but as any of us know who have performed one, if there is a squirrel-up in the process, the device is usually then a fairly expensive paperweight. This is the reason I have not used my Radeon 9600 Pro currently occupying a slot in my PC as a Mac add-in card. With a firmware update, it is one on a list of compatible models with Macs, but if I screw it up, I'm out my gaming card (a cheap one, but I write for a living, and it is a pretty good overclocker...) and the primary display for the PC, as the onboard graphics on my motherboard is barely adequate at best. The reason I'm getting ready to run a firmware hack is that the Pioneer 107D DVD-RW drive that came with my Mac is restricted to only 4x burn speed. Now the Windows retail version of this drive burns at 8x, and with a firmware hack has been shown to be reliable up to above 16x, if high-quality media like Ritek or TDK is used. Up at those speeds, though, don't whine if you burn a $1/disc coaster... Why Apple chose to use such a conservative speed I can only guess at. Perhaps they'd rather restrict their hardware to a guaranteed reliability rate and sacrifice a bit of speed in the process? Maybe. You are probably thinking, "why not just buy the retail version?" and you would have a valid question, as they are around $100--not exorbitant, and with the price of Dual-Layers getting ready to come down, it should get even cheaper. It's mainly due to the fact that we writers very rarely have a great deal of disposable income, and $100 is a lot of beer money. The way I figure it is that if the firmware flash goes well (it's Mac-native, even!), I am now in possession of a peripheral that is twice as fast as what I had before--perpetuating the never-ending chase for bigger, better, faster, more. If I blow it, my wife will make me fix it, and that'll justify buying the next model up, and I'm good to go. In the doghouse for a few days, but everything will work out fine eventually. Right? Anybody? (If the surgery goes well, there will be a part 2 to this article--If I blow it, I won't be able to reach the computer from my chain in the doghouse, and so there will be no part 2, and I'll go back to reviewing gear and programs and stay away from the tinkering, even though that's the best part of being a geek...)