T23: DL DVD Burners

[cliff320]

Are there any dual-layer dvd burners compatible with the Thinkpad T23 (either IBM or non-IBM) available on the market? Both NEC and Toshiba produce 8X internal dual layer drives (NEC ND-6500A), (Toshiba SD-6472), but I'm not sure how to find out if these are compatible or not. Thanks for your help!

[johnson]

bump

Hopefully Ian will respond to this. I read that he said all you have to do is take parts off the old drive and transfer it to the new drive.

[ian]

I'm not at all clear as to the actual question - your link led me to here so I'll try to imagine what in fact you're asking...

The major part of the CD/DVD drives are the same physical shape and size - it's simply a case of changing the part called the "caddy". This is in fact made up of three parts - two 'sides' and a 'rear' with the electrical connections. It's a case of unscrewing these three plastic strips from the original drive and screwing them back onto the new drive - the face plate doesn't change so the size and or shape of the LED doesn't really come into the equation.

There are some drives available where the little oblong notch to the lower right hand side of the faceplate isn't in fact cut out, and for this to fit an Ultrabay 2000 a piece of plastic will have to be removed - I've heard of people doing this with a craft knife, after having first removed the faceplate of course.

Hope this helps.

[DaveO]

Ive had some 1st hand expierience here.

I tested a friends T23 with the burners from my T30s, as I had read of someone not being able to boot their T23 with burner installed.

1st the Panasonic UJ-825 (4x) took almost 4 minutes to boot past the T23 IBM bios screen, not sure why.... but only takes a few secs on my T30s. The UJ-825 burns all formats incl. RAM but not DL though.... which is what you specified....

2nd the relatively late model Pioneer DVR-K04L (8x) boots with no delay on the T23. It burns DL but not RAM....

Ive been told the Panasonic UJ-845 (8x) should be released by March-April and will burn DL and RAM, regardless of how fast it boots a T23.....

These drives are slot load and needed the plastic notch cut on the fascia as Ian mentioned.

Hope this info is of some use.

[johnson]

Thanks for the replies. I was mainly worried about having to cut out a slot on the new drive's faceplate but I guess I have to if I want it to fit. I just ordered two sticks of Samsung 512MB RAM for about the cost of one stick of what Crucial wanted so the burner will have to wait. This month's $300 gas bill doesnt help either.