Convert R50e to Swappable Ultrabay?????

Message

bagekko · #1 Post by **bagekko** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:42 am

I made a mistake, I bought my father a R50e w/o realizing that it did not have the swappable ultrabay.... just learned cause I got a DVD+/-RW for my R40 and was giving him my CDRW/DVD until I looked at the connection.

Is there anyway to modify the R50e to fix this stupid thing IBM did?

Thanks

gazingwa · #2 Post by **gazingwa** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:50 am

IBM didn't do a stupid thing, they just made it cheaper because that what the e means as far as i know, the 50 series uses 9.5mm drives where the 40 series uses the 12.5mm drives... i don't think you can swap them

bagekko · #3 Post by **bagekko** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:14 am

The size of the drives are identical, my R40 has the mounting brackets on the drive where his does not, the R50 has a fixed ultrabay. The problem is that the connection on a bare drive is different, his CD Rom has a male end where as the DVD CDRW from my R40 w/o the bracket has a female end. The motherboards on a R50 or R50e are the same. There must be some way to remove the fixed ultrabay and put in the proper connection to accept other devices.

bagekko · #4 Post by **bagekko** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:23 am

There are R50e's out there w/ CDRW DVD drives, I was just wondering if anyone got some system parts from IBM to modify one w/ a fixed ultrabay to do what I want

gazingwa · #5 Post by **gazingwa** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:33 am

Ok, if they are the same size, take the brackets off of the 40 drive, and screw it in, that machine isn't capable of ultrabay drives because....
1 you need the rails and locking mechanism
2 the motherboard doesn't have the connector
3 the motherboard doesn't support warm swap on the cd drive
it would be extremely expensive to upgrade

bagekko · #6 Post by **bagekko** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:53 am

His R50e is a 18422QU... IBM lists one replacement MB for that 39T0334, there are 3 older part numbers there, unless his has one of those and the connections were different then. But the 39T0334 is listed for all R50e's w/o wireless. If its simply changing the MB then thats not that bad, sometimes they pop up on Ebay cheap.

Having the drive be warm swappable is not an issue, having it fixed is not a problem. I would be interested to know if anyone has an R50e w/ a CDRW/DVD if their drive has the rails or its just bare.

gazingwa · #7 Post by **gazingwa** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:58 am

No, I meant a board out of an r50, anyways i was trying to explain that it would be a mess, it doesn't matter what the r50 has, it is a drive one way or another, take it out, swap whatever caddy if it has one on to the 40 drive and put it back in, as long as you are SURE the drives are the same size, there should be no problems

Convert R50e to Swappable Ultrabay?????

Convert R50e to Swappable Ultrabay?????

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