[ltp] Upgrading inbuilt DVD/CD drive

[Richard Neill]

Andrew Barr wrote:
> 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.

I *think* you can use a stock model. However, why not buy a USB drive? 
It's probably cheaper. You can also buy USB-IDE adapters for about $40, 
which will work with any IDE drive; this would also allow you to have an 
external Hard drive.  (check Linux support first though, just in case).

Lastly, it is possible that this is a case of "to get there, you don't 
start from here". Unless you actually want to burn video-DVDs to play in 
a standalone player, there might be a different way to solve your 
problem. What do you want the DVDs for?

Richard