[ltp] T30: Experience with adding a DVD drive

[Atul Chitnis]

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