[ltp] Upgrading inbuilt DVD/CD drive

[Andrew Barr]

I've found myself needing a DVD burner here a few times, and not really
wanting to fire up my desktop PC to use the one there. So, I've been
thinking about replacing the optical drive on my Thinkpad R51 (a
DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive). Is it possible to use stock notebook drives as is
on this generation of machines (minus, of course, the bezel not fitting
perfectly)? The connectors on my Thinkpad drive and the drives sold on
line (at least the NEC model I looked at) seems remarkably similar, at
least I can't tell any difference. There are pages on Thinkwiki dealing
with converting drives for earlier generations of Thinkpads and
incarnations of UltraBay, but from what I can tell it looks like most
proprietary-ness has been done away with on the machine I have.

Does anyone have experience here? IBM OEM parts are several times more
expensive than the retail units, which makes me wonder if there is still
some vestige of vendor lock-in remaining in these models that would
allow them to charge prices like that.

Andrew