Laptop cd/dvd drives

[Moogar]

Can most laptops take any particular kind of standard slimline drive? I mean, so long as you have the drive mounting cage an IBM thinkpad will take the same yum cha drive as a toshiba tecra right?

Pardon my ignorance in advance

[dilligaf]

In my limited (thats the disclaimer ) experience, the newer slimline drives will replace those in notebooks made in the past couple of years. However, the firmware in the drive will determine whether that drive is destined to be a slave, master or cable select. In some cases the manfacturer will supply a firmware update to change it to your spec (Toshiba), in other cases there will be nil support eg: Pioneer DVR-K04...which happens to be the drive Im still trying to fit to my Asus notebook. I would google hard for a particular drive, going into a particular notebook.
BTW this is no vendor verdict for the Pioneer drive as no promises were made on their part, merely assumptions made on mine. Its a great drive, just not suited as a direct replacement for my OEM drive. I'll figure this sucker out eventually

[dilligaf]

Update on the DVR-K04L drive, decided to change the jumpers on the hdd (at least IT had some) to slave (drive 1), this let the DVR-K04L have its way & be the master drive. Notebook boots fine & the DVR-K04L is detected ok by XP & Nero. Will do a couple of rips/burns but at this stage all is good

[frenchnew]

Originally Posted by dilligaf

Update on the DVR-K04L drive, decided to change the jumpers on the hdd (at least IT had some) to slave (drive 1), this let the DVR-K04L have its way & be the master drive. Notebook boots fine & the DVR-K04L is detected ok by XP & Nero. Will do a couple of rips/burns but at this stage all is good

Other solution to the Reverse ATA setting on those OE drives.

It requires soldering pin 47 (Cable Select) with pin 45 (ground).

I just did this modification on a Nec ND6500-A that replaced a Panasonic (Mashushita) UJ-811 DVD drive in my Voodoo M855 laptop (Mitac 8355 chassis).

The main problem as you probably know is that some of the laptop manufacturers reverse the ATA setting in the laptop's BIOS and the drive they used are flashed to SLAVE so once installed it shows up has MASTER.

Most replacement DVD/CD-Rom drive for laptops that are supplied by the manufacurers are supplied as MASTER only and the manufacturer will supply special Firmware only to the laptop manufacurers.

See the following forum message, page 5 for more details
http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/tm.asp?...5&mpage=5&key=

Best regards from Montreal, Canada

Frenchnew