Linux and My Apple SuperDrive

I have an Apple SuperDrive 2 that would not work on Linux Mint 19. The drive was visible when it plugged it, but would not accept disks. Fortunately I found this article with instruction on how to wake up Apple’s drive and start working.

Here’s the basics:

1. Install sg3-utils:

   ... sudo apt-get install sg3-utils
   

2. Find the device id (likely sr0 or sr1). Mine was sr0:

   ... ls -al /dev | grep sr
   lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root           3 Nov 10 11:46 cdrom -> sr0
   lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root           3 Nov 10 11:46 cdrw -> sr0
   lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root           3 Nov 10 11:46 dvd -> sr0
   lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root           3 Nov 10 11:46 dvdrw -> sr0
   brw-rw----+  1 root cdrom    11,   0 Nov 10 11:46 sr0
   

3. Wake the drive up:

   ... sg_raw /dev/sr0 EA 00 00 00 00 00 01
   SCSI Status: Good
   

   After this command, the drive immediately woke up and pull the CD I had partially inserted into the drive and opened up my default audio player.