Z33A upgrade

A few years back I purchased a Z33A from proportable.com. Its served me well since then but recently the optical drive failed when it went out of alignment and wouldn't read anything. I need to replace it and, at first, I had trouble finding the right match for the drive, model UJDA765, since it seems to be used in many notebooks. Amazingly, proportable support promptly informed me that the UJDA765 is standard and the differences are cosmetic- not bad support for years later!

But, being the standard computer geek that I am, I take a failure as just an excuse for an upgrade. I was wondering about putting in a DVD burner, m'be a ram upgrade. Anyone have experience along these lines? And what has worked for you?

 

I researched the DVD burner myself in the last week.

Dealer quote was $190, and looking on eBay at super slimline 9.5mm DVD+-RW(DL)s like the Asus one (the UJ-842s), they ran $150-$200 without the bezel, right in line with the quote. The 9.5mm drives are expensive! I am going to get an external slim DVD+-RW so I can use it with a couple of other computers I have with out of date optical drives, but I'm still kicking myself for not paying the $80 extra when I got the machine to have it installed.

As for RAM, that's easy. Kingston has it:
512 MB MicroSODIMM
Assuming you have the Z33A with 256 onboard, putting that in your one slot will give you 768MB, should speed Windows up a lot.

 

Jumper- Do you have a model number for that dvd burner?

When I was shopping for the Z33A I heard of people hacking it to get it to support 1G of ram. It may be only a rumor, but has anyone heard more definitive information?

 

There are several Panasonic 9.5mm internal DVD burners. The fastest one I can find is the UJ-842, which is 6x for DVD-R and 4x for DVD+R, a little bit slower then the 8x Asus drive. I didn't ask what the model number for the Asus drive was.

This is what I was thinking of getting for an external drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106034

The Z33Ae, which is what I have, supports 1GB of RAM natively since it has 512MB onboard and I put 512MB in the MicroDIMM slot. I never heard about any 'hacking' of the onboard RAM, nor would I attempt it due to the risk to my laptop.

 

Thanks for the lead, Jumper. I did some searching myself and I agree, $140+ seems to be the price range, which is too much to make the upgrade really worth it. Esp since I can find a standard replacement, even if used, for around $40+.

 

If you don't already have one and you travel a lot, the 9-cell battery is definitely worth it.

 

Yeah, its one of the first things I got. That and a padded case from zeroshock. An hour/hour and a half battery life wasn't really gonna do it.

 

Keep in mind the face plate. They may not match up. You will need the rail/frame from your old drive. Those ultra slim drives are hard to find especially with the correct faceplate. If your new drive faceplate does not match up you may not be able to transplant them. Honestly i dont know i never tried with an aftermarket drive

 

I believe that if the drive is the same model number, the faceplate can be removed from the original drive and put on the new one. That is the reason why a lot of the eBay sellers sell drives without faceplates at all, you just put the old one on it. Now as for how difficult that part of the operation is, I have no idea. I don't plan on trying it anytime soon, but someone in the 'Hardware' part of this forum might have some hints.

 

So, I found a great drive on ebay that was originally sold with an IBM laptop. I had to transplant the faceplate from my failing drive, which was tricky, and I had to remove the adapter that IBM had on the drive's connector, but, other than that, it was an easy swap. And it only cost me m'be a total of $30!

Overall, I consider this a success.

For those shopping, the models to remember are:

Standard CDR/DVD drive: UJDA765
Upgrade CDR/DVDR-DL drive: UJ-842

You can find the upgrade for ~$110 if you're lucky. Thats still nearly 4x what I paid for the standard, so- is it worth it?

 

I've also been considering updating drives. Thanks for the above info. Nice to know we can get a rebadged drive and switch the faceplates.

My Z33a is @ 768mb. I've been getting into a lot more graphics\web dev work and understandably it is putting a lot of stress on this little notebook.

1gb DDR2 Micro-Dimms are available, but they are still extremely expensive ($200+ for Kingston 533/667mhz and ~$450 Infineon).

Are these 1gb DDR2 Micro-dimms known to work on the Z33a/e?

Does anyone know of any ASUS resellers who are willing to sell these parts?

 

I thought Z33A uses super-slim optical drive? I don't think regular slim drive will fit in there.

update:
never mind, you swap the drive already.

 

Hi i am trying to replace my optical drive on the Z33a

I got the UJDA765, switched over the guide rails, face plate etc. but when I try to boot when it is inserted the laptop won't boot. I went to the bios setup and it does not recognize either the new cdrom OR the hard drive. When I pull it back out (or put in the old CD rom drive) everything boots fine.

I look at the drives, but they seem identical. are there hidden jumpers I have to set or someting? The only thing that i can find different is that the new drive says HW: 1.10, while the old drive says HW: 1.0.

Any ideas? do I need to download drivers or new bios or something?

thanks!

 

Wont help
you need a different drive! or get firmware. remove the hdd and flash the odd. fairly hard task for end user though

 

Thanks for the advice Geared2play. Saves me a lot of tinkering
Is the problem that my new drive is not compatable with my system?
(i presume it it is the fact that HW: 1.10)

If so can anyone tell me how to get a replacement drive that can be used in the ASUS z33a? I looked back at the listing for the drive I bought and there is no mention of the HW version . . .

what should I be looking for?

thanks so much !

arass