So my Itronix XR-1 arrived today....

It's a weird animal. But one question I have right now is:

Will a laptop not recognize an optical drive if it's set as slave/master? I don't see any IDE settings on the BIOS and the drive I'm trying to install came from an external USB unit (would it be set as slave in this case?). I remember reading something about soldering some contact points to make a drive work in the toughbook and wonder if it's the same deal here. The drive gets no power either, so no blinking light or anything. HDD is on a SATA channel BTW.


A more thorough review will come later I suppose.

 

Thats an issue
In toughbooks ,even if it has the wrong Master/or slave settings ,the drive is powered

 

I thought so too, the fact that the channel's not present in the BIOS kind of worried me as well, however device manager shows it as working and present

 

UPDATE:
Ok, I tried another drive (This one came from a toughbook caddy (set master from the factory right?) Same thing, no power. I checked the device manager once more and it lists IDE/ATA ATAPI conrollers as ATA chan 0 and ATA chan 1. Now the cd drive is clearly IDE connector and not ATA, so I'm wondering either:

The mobo has 2nd ATA channel converted to IDE connector (makes no sense, why not just use an ATA optical drive to begin with?)<-Anyone ever seen this done?
or
There's a 2ndary free ATA channel, and IDE channel(s) is dead and thus not being show in the device manager.

At this point is looking like the latter one.

 

Wow, this laptop is the most un-serviceable thing ever. I've tried to crack it open twice now, and the 2nd times @ 50 screws off I still couldn't part it in half. I'm trying to see if the drive is making contact w/the port...

I still don't want to give up on it yet, for the motherboard takes 4 gigs of ram, the hd is sata, and I'm pretty sure the processor can be upgraded to a t7600 2.3 ghz.

 

There are Yahoo Groups for Itronix Laptop computers such as the Itronix GoBook or Itronix Cross Country or Itronix XC 6250.

Here's a link to the Itronix Gobook Forum:

ItronixGoBook : ItronixGoBook

Perhaps they can help you.

 

Keep in mind that an optical drive receiving no power will probably not show up in any sort of device list - the data connection alone will not power the drive's electronics.

You'll need to sort out the power issue before going any further.

 

Thanks Azrial, that's another thing about this piece, lack of info...

The slim drive has IDE and power in the same plug am I not right? From the two drives I dismantled here, I don't see a power connector, but both having the ATAPI port only.

As such:

 

Power on the Atapi

38 +5V - + 5 volts power
39 +5V - + 5 volts power
40 +5V - + 5 volts power
41 +5V - + 5 volts power
42 +5V - + 5 volts power
43 GND - Ground
44 GND - Ground
45 GND - Ground
46 GND - Ground

 

thank you....now if only I could get to those pins.....sight.

 

Ok, so I went to the groups and I'm gonna need one of these:

Anyone seen one like it?

 

Looks like a 50 pin JAE connector typically used on the back of a cd/dvd drive.

 

I'm kind of thinking it's a 50 pin JAE to 50 Pin JAE extension....which seems kind of odd. I just counted the pins on the photo and it's 50.

Anyone know where to get such thing? Or a cable?