[ltp] T30: Experience with adding a DVD drive

[Dmitriy Morozov]

Is there anything like this for an ultra-bay battery (i.e., a cheap 
alternative to IBM's battery)? Also a quick search on Froogle shows 
that newegg.com sells these drives in the US.

Best,
Dmitriy

On Wednesday 07 July 2004 10:19 am, Atul Chitnis wrote:
> I recently found a need to add a DVD drive to my T30. Checking with
> IBM (I was in Europe at that time), I got quoted some 550 euros
> plus shipping, which was a wee bit too rich for my blood.
>
> A friend then pointed out this place called Alternate.de to me, who
> had the NEC ND-5500A in stock, for 149 euros plus shipping. Bought
> it, and had it overnighted to me.
>
> Next day, the thing arrived. I had to strip the guiderails and rear
> connector off my existing DVD/CDRW drive. The slimline drives come
> with a standard little connector in teh back, but the TP uses the
> UltraBay connector, which is essentially a form-factor convertor
> plus some buffer electronics to safeguard system and drive against
> issues when ejecting the drive.
>
> Guiderails and connector smoothly transferrred to the new drive,
> and minutes later I had the drive installed and working under
> Linux.
>
> One issue was the bezel - the TP T30 has its IRDA port at the
> bottom right corner of where the drive goes, and the bezel was
> obscuring it. It also didnt allow the drive to lock in 100%, which
> caused a few coasters when the drive suddenly popped out of the
> bay. A hot knife and a bit of careful whittling on the bezel fixed
> that problem, and now everything works just A-OK.
>
> Under Linux, growisofs had no complaints about the drive, and I was
> able to use it without a problem to write DVD+RW and DVD-R disks.
>
> Just thought I'd write all this down in case someone has a need to
> do something similar, and doesnt want to pay a king's ransom for a
> DVD writer to IBM. :)
>
> --
> Atul Chitnis
> atul.chitnis@gmail.com
> http://atulchitnis.com