As tnkgrl mentions at the outset of this hack, the MacBook Air SuperDrive is a nice little slice of hotness, retailing for a mere $99, and doing the whole external drive thing with Apple’s sense of style.
Unfortunately, it only works with the MacBook Air due to a proprietary IDE to USB bridge, as tnkgrl discovered.
For a mere $9 she was able to find a replacement part, and after pushing some internals around she had her slef a Mac mini and HP Mini-Note-friendly USB disc drive.
We’ve all been laboring under the assumption that Apple needed more than the standard USB power draw, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that she was able to pull this off with a regular part, and we demand Apple start selling $108 SuperDrives-for-all immediately.

More information [Engadget]