Apple is recognized to lock its products to a specific use, the last act of meanness is the SuperDrive sold for MacBook Air. This is just a simple DVD USB2 auto-powered external engraver, however Apple could not stop themselves from restricting its use to only the MacBook Air.
A few months ago (cf news of the 15-02-2008), we dismounted SuperDrive in order to know the references of the mechanics. Our doubts are now confirmed, the problem is not a specific firmware of the Optiarc engraver, but bridge PATA to USB2. It is thus a dedicated do-it-yourselfer to make his external SuperDrive universal by replacing this bridge by another, even though this replacement bridge costs only $9.-.
The method to do this can be found
