Ultrabay2000 DVD/RW Drive ***PIC***

[PandorasThinkpad]

Hi,

at the moment i try to get an 27L4359 drive (DVD/RW IV) from ibm with date 2005 and Ultrabay2000 connector, with which i hope, so the force will be with me and i will finally get it, to boot my T23 with an DVD-RW Medium..will this work, who already knows?

Does anyone here have seen such an drive, too? It seems to be an not so often to see drive from ibm for the Ultrabay2000 slot..in case an very very rare DVD writer...

Thanks for answers,

kindly,

PandorasThinkpad

[cadillacmike68]

First you do not NEED a DVD-RW Just to boot your system. You only Need a DVD drive, which will read CDs as well.

You mention booting from a DVD-RW media. A regular DVD player drive should be able to boot - IF the DVD-RW disc has not degenerated as many such discs tend to do over time. I do not use CDRW or DVDRW media for that reason.

ANY Ultrabay 2000 DVD-CD, DVD-CDRW or DVD-RW (or DVD-Multi) will work and there should be many available. If you still can't fine one I have SEVERAL of these in all three (or 4) types.

And yes the DVD-RW drives from that time period are rare. I only have two of them. I have plenty of DVD-CDRWs and DVDs, but only two DVD writers in Ultrabay 2000.

[kfzhu1229]

For Ultrabay 2000 a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive is already rare enough.
I am surprised a DVD-RW burner drive actually exists for Ultrabay 2000, because for my similar era Dell Laptops, putting in a DVD burner will make the BIOS think I have only a CD-ROM drive, even though it works fine.
You can always mod one to DVD-RW burner by taking a dead CD-ROM drive and swap the plastics and face plate with any IDE DVD-RW drive. Though the face plate may not match.
Typically any early 2000s CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive or a DVD-ROM drive should boot from a DVD-RW disc just fine. The earliest DVD drives from a 770ED for example might act up a little bit because of the slightly different frequencies used in DVD-RW discs.

[cadillacmike68]

The CDRW-DVDs are out there, less than $20 (might not include shipping).

DVD-RWs in Ultrabay 2000 - haven't seen those in a while. I'm glad I got the two way back.

[kfzhu1229]

The CDRW-DVDs are out there, less than $20 (might not include shipping).

Well US$20 is an outrageous price to pay for these drives. After tax and postage in Canada that's C$40-50, which is what I pay for for an entire laptop of this era.
A CDRW-DVD Dell D-bay drive which has compatible internals as ultrabay 2000 drives cost pennies for example (as for some low end models, an entire laptop featuring such a drive cost no more than US$20). I have a stack of them and I have to from time to time disassemble them to use them on other laptops instead and use the remaining caddies for D-bay to SATA bays

[cadillacmike68]

The CDRW-DVDs are out there, less than $20 (might not include shipping).

Well US$20 is an outrageous price to pay for these drives. After tax and postage in Canada that's C$40-50, which is what I pay for for an entire laptop of this era.
A CDRW-DVD Dell D-bay drive which has compatible internals as ultrabay 2000 drives cost pennies for example (as for some low end models, an entire laptop featuring such a drive cost no more than US$20). I have a stack of them and I have to from time to time disassemble them to use them on other laptops instead and use the remaining caddies for D-bay to SATA bays

Well, the OP wants a drive, you can sell him one if you want and he agrees, or he can get one off the internet. The main point is that they are still out there if the OP wants one bad enough.

I'd like to find a working T30 with RAM, HDD and a CDRW-DVD drive for $20-30. In fact I'll buy three or four at that price right now.

[kfzhu1229]

I'd like to find a working T30 with RAM, HDD and a CDRW-DVD drive for $20-30. In fact I'll buy three or four at that price right now.

Well earlier this year I found 3 ThinkPad T41/T42 machines for C$30 together. All missing hard drives but caddies are present and all but one are fully working. That one was the one that I had to do a GPU oven baking to "fix". All of them came with CD-RW/DVD combo drives and I suppose those are not a single bit cheaper because Ultrabay slim is proprietary and the drive on the insides works with nothing else short of a few macbooks.
The key really is to wait for the best deal locally.

[PandorasThinkpad]

Thanks for all the answers,

yes, myself i also already have two of the cd-rw/dvd combo drives for the ultrabay2000 slot...and they both work fine but none of them will let me boot with this dvd-rw with elementary linux 32bit on it..

And if i will win the bidding for this drive and finally will have got it, this dvd/rw drive from ihm, i will be able to give further information on this..

There is no way to upload an picture in this message here so i am not able to show the drive itself, right?

Regards,

Pandora

[ajkula66]

yes, myself i also already have two of the cd-rw/dvd combo drives for the ultrabay2000 slot...and they both work fine but none of them will let me boot with this dvd-rw with elementary linux 32bit on it..

I suspect that your problem is not the drive but the media itself.

Have you booted that same DVD in another system ?

It's also a fairly ambitious OS to run - given the minimal hardware requirements stated online - on such an ancient laptop.

Good luck

[cadillacmike68]

yes, myself i also already have two of the cd-rw/dvd combo drives for the ultrabay2000 slot...and they both work fine but none of them will let me boot with this dvd-rw with elementary linux 32bit on it..

I suspect that your problem is not the drive but the media itself.

Have you booted that same DVD in another system ?

It's also a fairly ambitious OS to run - given the minimal hardware requirements stated online - on such an ancient laptop.

Good luck

I was thinking the same thing - the disc has probably degenerated and is bad.

[cadillacmike68]

I'd like to find a working T30 with RAM, HDD and a CDRW-DVD drive for $20-30. In fact I'll buy three or four at that price right now.

Well earlier this year I found 3 ThinkPad T41/T42 machines for C$30 together. All missing hard drives but caddies are present and all but one are fully working. That one was the one that I had to do a GPU oven baking to "fix". All of them came with CD-RW/DVD combo drives and I suppose those are not a single bit cheaper because Ultrabay slim is proprietary and the drive on the insides works with nothing else short of a few macbooks.
The key really is to wait for the best deal locally.

By locally, do you mean local thrift shops, pawn shops, somewhere else?

There are numerous pawn shops around me here, but they are all pretty greedy. There are a few large thrift shops, but I haven't sen a ThinkPad in one for a while.

Or do you shop used computer stores??

[rkawakami]

If you can give me a couple of hours I can dig out one of my many T23 systems, throw in a DVD/RW drive and find/make a bootable DVD-RW disk. I don't believe I have any genuine IBM drives in the DVD/RW format but I've got several different drives that I've stuck on the Ultrabay 2000 plastics (two UJ-840 and a Toshiba SN-S082 right here on my desk; there's others spread out in my office).

[rkawakami]

So that went faster than I originally thought....

T23-41 with an SXGA+ screen (reddish on boot) and an unbootable HD (WinXP complains about a bad file), with a UJ-840 DWD-RW drive that was already in the system and a bootable DVD-RW disk (memtest86+ v5.31b) that was created on this W520 I'm typing on using CDBurnerXP, booted just fine. I put in the UJ-840 drive that's been sitting on my desk for the last couple of years and it too booted. I swapped in a UJ-840 drive that was in an A31p on my desk and it booted the DVD-RW disk. I put in the SN-S082 drive and it booted. I put in another UJ-840 drive that was in a pile of CD and DVD drives but has a label on it that says "don't boot" and it doesn't boot (the T23 BIOS does not recognize it as a connected drive). So there's obviously something wrong with that last UJ-840 drive but the other ones work fine for at least booting a freshly-made DVD-RW.

In the past I have bought a bunch of used and new UJ-8xx drives off of eBay and installed all of the proper Ultrabay pieces. They were significantly cheaper than an original IBM Multi-burner/Combo drive. They just need a little bit of physical work in swapping out the mounting and electrical connection pieces. What's a pain is altering (or sourcing) the notched faceplate required by the Ultrabay 2000 opening.

edit: Found another non-UJ840 drive... It's an HP-branded GWA-4080N in a different T23. It boots the DVD-RW disk as well.

[kfzhu1229]

If you can give me a couple of hours I can dig out one of my many T23 systems, throw in a DVD/RW drive and find/make a bootable DVD-RW disk. I don't believe I have any genuine IBM drives in the DVD/RW format but I've got several different drives that I've stuck on the Ultrabay 2000 plastics (two UJ-840 and a Toshiba SN-S082 right here on my desk; there's others spread out in my office).

Yup that's exactly what I am talking about. You can transfer the plastics from Ultrabay 2000 to the drives from a much cheaper Dell D-bay drive for example and you have a cheap DVD-RW Ultrabay 2000 burner. I do the same trick for Ultraslimbay to use Ultrabay 2000 DVD-ROM drives and for Dell C-bay to use CD-RW/DVD combo drives from a Dell D-bay. But weirdly enough if you stick such modded Ultraslimbay to the PCMCIA external enclosure designed for ThinkPad 240 and 570 systems it does not work!

By locally, do you mean local thrift shops, pawn shops, somewhere else?

There are numerous pawn shops around me here, but they are all pretty greedy. There are a few large thrift shops, but I haven't sen a ThinkPad in one for a while.

Or do you shop used computer stores??

By local I meant local classifieds, which in the US I believe are craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.
They can come with nasty surprises though. Out of the 3 T41/T42 systems, one of them came with a Cockroach infestation in the PCMCIA cage! It turns out exactly one of them were alive! Good thing I killed it on sight and also extremely fortunate to find all the eggs it laid and remove them using tape before I have an infestation in my house!

[cadillacmike68]

Dayum. Get an insect bomb and set it off in the garage with the thinkpad!!!

Some of the client places i go to could star in an episode of hoarders or similar.

[PandorasThinkpad]

Hi,

me again...well, have no other 32bit system anymore to test this rw otherwise out..

The DVD/RW IV i bought on ebay cost me 11€ delivery included, so it will be not as much money wasted if i will have tested out and it even will fail to boot the dvd+rw medium (so sorry, forgotten to write the + until now)...

In the past i did seversl mods (like T430s to FHD, X200 to AFFS screen, X201 to 1440x900 screen, X240 to three button touchpad), but not such special mods like taking another drive and mod it to work in an thinkpad ultrabay slot..i did and i am not sure that i would get it to work if i would give it an try out.

If i have tested out the drive when it will have arrived i will gladly give an answer again on this case..

Until then nice regards,

PandorasThinkpad

[rkawakami]

@PandorasThinkpad

I just noticed that you specified an IBM FRU in your initial post (27L4359). I just looked it up and it appears to be a CD-RW/DVD Combo drive, not a DVD writer implied by your description of DVD/RW IV. In other words, that 27L4359 drive will read CD, CD-R, CD-RW and write CD-R and CD-RW. It will also read DVD but I'm not sure if a drive that old will read DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R or DVD+RW disks. It certainly will not write any DVD format. From what I remember I had trouble reading burnt DVD disks on those Combo drives.

Since you corrected the type of media you are trying to boot (DVD+RW) in your latest post, I repeated my boot attempts using the three different DVD writer drives that I have handy (UJ-840, SN-S082 and GWA-4080N) but using a DVD+R disk, not a +RW since I don't have any of those re-writable disks on hand. All three drives booted the DVD+R disk. I'll see if I can find one of those CD-RW/DVD Combo drives in my stock and try the two DVD boot disks.

edit: I found a CD-RW/DVD Combo drive (08K9820) in the office and put it into a T23. I tried the standard CD-R disk I have with memtest86+ on it. It booted. I mounted the DVD-RW disk I created the other day and it too booted correctly. However, the DVD+R disk that I made today was not recognized as a valid bootable disk and the system proceeded to load Windows. Windows showed the drive as "empty" when the DVD+R disk was mounted and showed a BOOT folder and README.TXT file when the DVD-RW was loaded. This drive is a Hitachi-LG (HLDS) GCC-4160N.

545x600 59KB

[RealBlackStuff]

Maybe you should use DVD-R (minus) instead of DVD+R (plus)?

[kfzhu1229]

DVD+R and especially DVD+RW is known to create a lot of compatibility problems with older drives before these standards existed. Something like that CD-RW/DVD combo drive works just fine with it but it can be highly picky and you should resort to some DVD-R or DVD-RW discs instead.

[cadillacmike68]

DVD+RW are the most problematic. DVD+R should not be as bad. I don't use and RW, CD or DVD, but I use both DVD-R and DVD+R for copies. microsoft recommends DVD+R so I copy all my restore discs to that format. But not if they are will be used for an older system, I'll use DVD-R discs.

[dr_st]

Some of the DVD+R/RW compatibility issues with early drives can be resolved by setting 'booktype' to DVD-ROM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_type

[PandorasThinkpad]

Hi!

Have one CD-RW-DVD Drive found in one of many toolboxes here that once was changed to Ultrabay2000 port from ultrabay slim as i guess and this is booting with the DVD+RW medium without any problems, the type of this drive i will check out if i find the time to...all orignal cd-rw/dvd combos fail to boot...

And no, ray, it is what i told, an DVD/RW drive from IBM, you may find it searching for sold items on ebay and using the ebay number 233809510461...

Linux Mint 19.1 "says" that the IBM DVD/RW drive is an NEC DVD+/-RW ND 6500A

The CD-RW/DVD i haven't used again until now so i can't give there any more informations at the moment.

Nice regards,

PandorasThinkpad

[PandorasThinkpad]

Nice second christmas day..

To lighten up the dark a bit…there are several drives with the same Fru 27L4359,
I owned once a drive with this Fru which was an DVD Multi Drive, it was able to write CD and DVD…the now bought DVD/RW drive also should be able to write DVDs the open question is, if only DVD-R or even DVD-RW…but this might answer anyone else here with such an drive...

Regards,

PandorasThinkpad