Aftermarket CD/DVD caddy?!?

So I sat down today to swap my CD drive for a DVD burner model.

I was following TB's excellent tutorial when I started noticing differences between the unit in the pics and mine.


First off no metal housing that says Panasonic:

Just a bare drive sitting in a piece of plastic, decidedly not tough.


My first thought was that someone had taken the top off and did not replace it. However there are other differences as well.


Here's the left side of the unit (facing the front of the drive):

Here the plastic takes up the entire side and is the mounting surface for the drive. As you can see this one only has one screw.


The right side is different as well:

Instead of a nice metal bracket attacked to the drive and the base there are two plastic mounting tabs which are a part of the base itself.


Now onto the connector assembly:

No R2 box, no spot for a jumper that I can decipher, looks quite different form the one that TB took pics of.


My thought is that this is either an aftermarket caddy, one specially made for a customer (this was an SBC unit) or perhaps this is from an earilier model of TB. It definitely does not seem typical Toughbook quality.



Another note, the "stock" drive is a Teac CD drive and does appear to be a master as it shows up as such in the BIOS, while the replacement drive did not (though it was recognized by windows).



So what exactly do I have here?

I'm sure someone on here knows.

 

NTTD -

Does this drive/caddy actually WORK in your laptop?

If so, then YES - I suspect it is some el-cheapo China knock-off made to get around the high cost of genuine Panny product. I've seen similar caddies made for the Dell C-Series laptops 5 or 6 years ago; there was a shortage of genuine Dell product, the prices went thermal, and someone in a Singapore or Guangdong plastic mill made some for local sale, and before you know it they're all over eBay.

I would guess that you CAN perform the swap, but you might need to buy a genuine Panny or Teac (Owned by Panny) drive.

mnem
Gnarly.

 

After close to 5 years working with Toughbooks... THAT is a first for me. I've never seen one like that. (And hope I never do.)

IF it doesn't work when swapped... If you have BSOD, WAY slow boot or discover problems in the BIOS or the OS... Look up an old Apple thread on some forum somewhere... That was what gave me the idea on how to do it with the Toughbook caddy. You just had to short the correct pins to make it a master... After I checked which pins were what on the Panny caddy... I found that jumping R2 turned ALMOST any drive into a Master automatically. Some drives, such as the WAY cheap NEC drives won't work with this either... No how no way. I had one in stock and just shoved it into an external box for working on stuff like the CF-18/19 where an external drive is needed...

 

Yeah it works fine with the "stock" Teac drive. It recognizes that drive as a master and I have installed programs with it. Just doesn't work with the DVD drive I would like to put in there.

Ceerap!!
I was afraid of that!
Yeah like I said it just seems cheap, and they didn't even put in all the mounting screws! The back screw hole on the left side is covered by a thin piece of plastic left over from molding, there has never even been a screw through that spot.
I think the whole unit kinda flops around a bit in there. I believe it touches the bay door because if I jostle the case right it triggers the eject!

Funny you should mention that. Just for the heck of it I tried jumping this spot on the other half of the connection assembly:

The TB did not like that at all, would not start until I pulled the drive. I removed the solder put the original drive back in and all is good.

Well thanks for the input, me thinks a real Panny drive is in the future. I'm gonna wait a bit though, cause of the prices.

 

Not sure if this is the one or not but won't the UJ-851 drive work without doing R2 mod ?
eBay - Computers Networking, Apple Macintosh Computers and Desktop PC Components items on eBay.com. Find IT on eBay.
$20.00-$25.00 maybe

 

"What a piece of junk!" --Moriarty ( Kelly's Heros)

 

I have heard that some of Apple's DVD drives are masters, but not sure.

From experience I'd say not to waste the money. The aftermarket caddy is pretty cheaply made. It would work OK for desktop use but I would not recommend it for field/rough use. Better to get the the Panny drive caddy.

 

The UJ-851 is made by Panasonic / Matsua UJ-851 DVD±RW Dual Layer LightScribe Notebook Multi Drive (UJ851)
I know there is a thread on this some where just not sure where . I think there is 2 drives that we found that we do not have to do the mods to if we use them

 

Cool a Panny superdrive w/ Lightscribe! Had I known I might not have gone w/ the Toshiba Samsung drive I purchased. Were these Apple drives? To my knowledge the only way to do Lightscribe w/ Apples (without modding) is to get an external drive.

 

I will look later for that post where a couple members used this drive without the R2 mod.....might be here http://forum.notebookreview.com/pan...cf-29-cd-dvd-swap-tutorial-lots-pictures.html somewhere ....Alex or Rick might be able to tell you to.

 

My UJ-851 needed modding to be bootable. Otherwise, detectable/works in windoze just fine.

 

Mostly, they seem to be Panasonic DVD drives. I use the slot load Panasonic UJ-825B 4x Slim DVD Super MULTIDrive. It was replaced by the "newer" UJ-835-B and UJ-845-B which is a 8.5GB Dual Layer.

I like them because they are Master by default, do not require the R2 solder mod and add DVD-RAM to the capabilities of the Toughbook.

 

Well I read every post and could only find one ( post 134-137) http://forum.notebookreview.com/pan...cf-29-cd-dvd-swap-tutorial-lots-pictures.html so it must be on some other thread

HP LG GSA-T20L Slim IDE 8x CDRW DVDRW Combo Burner for Laptops w Lightscribe - Universal Drive Fits Most Notebook PCs.. Store Part# - DVDRWL-HP-GSAT20L

 

The only thing the R2 mod does is to short two pins together. I can't remember what gave me the idea for this... I think it was someone who was doing a mod to his (Dare I say) Apple product and it gave me the idea for this mod.

I'm sure you can figure it out somehow...