Several readers emailed to point out an excellenct article in c't Magazine that showed how to use ResEdit on Apple CD/DVD drivers to make them recognize any CD ROM drives - not just Apple's.

One drawback was the fact you had to keep two copies of the CD extension active: the original for Apple's drives, and a modified version for non-Apple drives.

Thanks to Anthony Saxton, the author of ClipDragon, it's now posible to have a single modified driver work with both Apple CD drives, and any other SCSI CD ROM drive.

The screeshots below are for the Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.0.1. with additional descriptions for:

• Apple CD-ROM 5.4.2
• Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.2
• Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.2.2
• Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.3.1
• Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.3.5 (no change since 1.3.1)
• Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.4/1.4.3 (no change since 1.3.1)

Open a copy of the CD Driver in ResEdit and find the DRVR resources.

Open them with a double-click.

Open ID# 32 with a double-click.

If you get an error about the resource size, open it using the menu item "Open using Hex Editor"

The screenshot above for the Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.0.1 is representative of the changes to be made in all the drivers. Find the original value at the appropriate row and offset, and change it to the new value.

Below is a table for first change in the various AppleCD drivers.

Version	Row	Offset	Original Value	New Value
5.4.2	06B0	06B6	6704	4E71
1.0.1	06C8	06C8	6704	4E71
1.2	06C0	06C6	6706	4E71
1.2.2	06D8	06D8	6706	4E71
1.3.1	06D0	06D6	6706	4E71

Before

After

The graphic above, and the table below show the second change to be made to the driver.

Version	Row	Offset	Original Value	New Value
5.4.2	09C0	09C6	6606 4A84 6700 0086	4E71 4E71 4E71 4E71
1.0.1	0A10	0A10	6606 4A84 6700 0086	4E71 4E71 4E71 4E71
1.2	0AD0	0AD6	6604 4A84 6706	4E71 4E71 4E71
1.2.2	0AE8	0AE8	6604 4A84 6706	4E71 4E71 4E71
1.3.1	0AE0	0AE6	6604 4A84 6706	4E71 4E71 4E71

When you're finished, replace the original driver with the new one and restart your computer. Your Apple supplied CD ROM driver will now mount most SCSI CD ROM Drives!

Unfortunately, the edit doesn't work with every combination of CD drive and computer, but of the thousands that have performed the edit, I have received only a few emails of failure.

One reader wrote to say renaming the "Toast CD Reader" by adding a SPACE as the first character in the name - forcing it to load first, allows CD burners to work with the new driver.

Your milage may vary. :)