Thinkpads Forum

I have an IBM FRU# 08k9617 UltraBay 2000 CD-RW drive in my 600X UltraSlim Bay and it works perfectly.

Seriously.

Is this possible? Is it normal? Can I expect this compatibility with other UltraBay 2000 devices?

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28697

As long as you swap the drive rails and rear connector, yes it is possible to take Ultrabay 2000 optical drives and put them into the 600's Ultraslimbay.

What about IDE and/or SATA hard drive adapters?

There is already an Ultraslimbay hard drive adapter for IDE drives (FRU 05K5338). I don't know of any conversion kit that would take the Ultrabay 2000 2nd HD adapter and change it to the Ultraslimbay. I'd have to say that it probably doesn't exist due to the way that each of them has been designed. I also don't know if anybody ever made a SATA 2nd HD adapter for the Ultraslimbay; probably not, as the 600 series was already out-of-date by the time that SATA HDs came around.

The reason why it is possible (in most cases) to take a bare slimline optical drive (12.7mm height) that was originally designed for the Ultrabay 2000 and put it into the 600 system is that the connector on the back end of the optical drive is somewhat of a standard and that IBM simply encased the bare drive with custom pieces that enabled it to be plugged into the two different Ultrabays.

Bookworm wrote:I have an IBM FRU# 08k9617 UltraBay 2000 CD-RW drive in my 600X UltraSlim Bay and it works perfectly.

But, have you ever boot a CD from this drive in TP600?

If doesn't boot, you may need new firmware for "cableselect". Sometimes very hard to find...

For SATA-HDD in IDE-adaptor you need a very, very small 2.5" IDE-to-SATA-adaptor like this one... http://cgi.ebay.com/2-5-IDE-SATA-44-Pin ... 230b68ce14 (careful... it's only an example... this one maybe to large!)... and you have modify the case.

But I think, this mod is useless. The IDE WD320 seams to be big enough and all actually IDE HDDs are faster than the IDE-bus in 600x - so it never will be faster than ~30mb/s.

For SATA main HDDs on IDE-mainboards exists in the german forum a very remarkable thread (SATA in T4x)... http://www.thinkpad-forum.de/thinkpad-h ... post963151 ...SATA SSDs are cheap today
el-sahef is my "god of mod" ... real speedstep-mod for 600x/500mhz mainboards (for use with speedstep-processor), 1.3ghz mod for mmc2-processorboards, 133mhz FSB mod...

> But, have you ever boot a CD from this drive in TP600?

Yes.

I wouldn't consider the IDE to SATA adapter *useless*. It's the only way to get a hard drive up to 500 Gig in an older ThinkPad. But they don't work over 500 Gig, and the 1 Tb drives will fit in a 600. They just won't work.

Another surprise is the cost. A 500 Gig drive with an adapter isn't that much more than a 320 Gig IDE drive, if as much!

See if you can drag el-sahef over here to tell us about upgrade!