Slim DVD Writer on iBook

Back to late June, I had a honeymoon trip to Hokkaido and Tokyo. Where in
Tokyo, I had visted
LAOX's
MAC store in Abihabara (秋葉原) and found this
slim DVD
Writer from Logitec. As my iBook equipped a DVD-ROM drive only,
I was not able to backup my MP3s and photes to CDs. I need to copy the
files to my desktop PC and burn CD from it whenever I need to backup files.
As my MP3s and photes getting more, a CD Writer is somewhat necessary.
There are several advantage in this writer compare to other.
Not need to say it is light and slim so that I could be able to carry it along
with my iBook, but also it does not required external power adaptor as
it draws voltage from the iBook via Firewire connector. I have searched
such device in Hongkong but to no avail. So I decided to buy it
although the listed price is 44,000 Yen, but the shop sold it for 39,800 Yen.
I could also get the tax refund from this shop.

When I got back to Hongkong I tested the drive immediately.
I plugged the drive with Firewire cable and it power on automatically,
and it could also read CD and DVD. No problem for reading DVD Movies
and ripping CD in iTunes. However, Mac OS X 10.2.6 does not support this
writer natively. That means I cannot burn CD/DVD from Finder,
iTunes and iPhotes. I checked System Profiler and it also mention
burning is not supported for this drive.
But the bundled software (B's Recorder GOLD X) does the job.

OK, may be drive is too new, so it is not supported.
Hoping next revision 10.2 revision will include a new driver.
Moreover, from Apple Profiler I can see this drive is actually a Pioneer
DVR-K11. I googled it and find the information from

Accelerate Your Mac! site. I asked the site master (Thanks, Mike!)
to send me the hacked driver and he did. I copied the driver to the right
location, reboot, and it works! I had made a couple of CDs and DVDs from
Finder, iTunes and iPhotos without encounter any problem. However,
using the hacked driver is at my own risk. When a new revision of
OS X 10.2 is shipped and this drive does not get supported, this hacked
driver may not work. (At the moment of the writing, 10.2.8 is out.
But due to some problems in this update, Apple had pulled the download.
So I cannot have a try yet.)

After the test in iBook, I plugged the drive to my Firewire-enabled PC.
Of course I need to buy a new Firewire card for my PC. But in order to
recognize my new burner, I need to upgrade the Nero 5.5 to the latest
revision. I can successfully copy my Wedding DVD movie using DVD
Decrypter. Now, I have a lovely DVD Writer, worked on both Mac and PC!