Thinkpads Forum

I hope im not breaking any forum rules...
I have a T23 thinkpad with a dvd-rom..i want to "upgrade" to a dvd/cd burner type...will any other think pad versions work in mine....or is there one i can buy thats compaible..i'm trying to avoid gettign an external combo one
thx in advance

B

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

The T23 has what's called an Ultrabay 2000 (UB2K). It's a "standard" that applies to several different Thinkpads made around the same time frame (A2x, A3x, T2x, T30 systems). Any drive that originally came from IBM and is named as UB2K will work in the T23. One can also take a "bare" optical drive (i.e., it doesn't have any rails, carriers, connectors and/or brackets attached) and transfer the drive rails and electrical connector from the back of a UB2K drive and usually it will work properly. By that I mean that the drive will read and write disks but I've run into some optical drives that will not boot a known good CD or DVD. I think that it may be a question of firmware support or perhaps the drive is configured as a "slave" instead of a "master". I usually take M a t s u s h i t a UJ-840 or UJ-850 drives and do the conversion on them and in fact, have purchased a lot of 6 UB2K DVD part/repair drives earlier this evening for $22 just so I can scavenge the drive rails and connectors. The one other thing that needs to be done with this conversion is to either modify the front bezel of the drive by cutting a notch out of the right side (that matches the outline of the UB2K opening) or purchase a bezel that already has been designed to fit in the UB2K.

Note that the item in the eBay auction that goofyGAguy has referenced is NOT an original IBM drive. I don't believe that a dual-layer DVD burner was ever offered by the factory in the UB2K format. The label on the drive in that photo has the familiar black and yellow label that's used on IBM drives however there's "FOR IBM LAPTOPS" printed on the label and no IBM logo visible in the "normal" location (above the left side of the tray opening). Along with the description of, "Brand New Replacement Product, works as genuine parts, 100% OEM Compatible!!", leads me to believe that somebody is trying to make it look like a genuine IBM part but covering their bases and providing a legal disclaimer. That's not to say that the drive won't work; merely that you should not expect to get any factory support if something goes wrong with the drive.

And no, you didn't break any forum rules .

rkawakami wrote:And no, you didn't break any forum rules .

Speaking of which:

Ray, I'm just curious. Did you space out the brand "M a t s u s h i t a"
to avoid some kind of scanning mechanism on the board from getting
upset about the word inside that name?

Mike Blake wrote:Ray, I'm just curious. Did you space out the brand "M a t s u s h i t a"
to avoid some kind of scanning mechanism on the board from getting
upset about the word inside that name?

Previously it would have been replaced by *****Expletives removed by Moderator*****
But now I see that a filter adds the spaces in M a t s u s h i t a.

Yes it's an automatic filter that's been set up. Maybe I should have used "Panasonic" instead .

rkawakami wrote:Yes it's an automatic filter that's been set up. Maybe I should have used "Panasonic" instead .

Or spell it Matsush ita...

(Getting OT) Well, given my name, maybe it should be Mat sushi ta . Personally, I don't relish that food genre. I'll have a couple of pieces but I won't make a meal out of it.

(Back OT) Here's six DVD burners that I have won in the past few days:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0430388657 (UJ-850 $20)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0537539115 (UJ-840 $11.55)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0538665272 (UJ-840 $10.50)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0211880844 (GSA-4084N $15.50)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0490549181 (UJ-840 $17.84)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0212716319 (UJ-840 $12.57)

When combined with the rails from these six drives:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0503886473 (Lot of 6 Ultrabay 2000 DVD drives $21.84 or $3.64/rail set)

and some notched front bezels for the UJ-840/850 series that I've previously bought for about $5 each, then the most expensive DVD burner ends up being just less than $29 and the cheapest one just over $19. My understanding is that this same bezel will also fit the GSA-4084N drive. Yes, I'll have the headache of checking out the drives to make sure that they read and write all of the different types of disks that they are supposed to support, but it's my time and I don't really mind.