On Thursday 15 July 2004 13:17, adam@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
I don't really know about external USB CD-RWs but you would probably want USB 2.0 to make it burn at a reasonable speed. Anyhow, you say the laptop has an internal CD-rom drive? could you not replace it with a CD-RW drive?
Adam
This would be the "nice" option.
Slimline drives are of a standard size, mounting and interface, the only physical gotcha is that there are two (very similar) faceplate mounting designs on the drawer front (the drawer front is often unique to each model/ make laptop and so you probably need to fit the old front onto the new drive)
However you also need to be careful when selecting the drive, Laptops vary as to whether the CDrom is Secondary Master or Primary Slave (most are Secondary Master) worse still most Slimline CD Drives are Primary/Secondary switchable only in firmware. Sometimes it is a different firmware build and sometimes it is a switch in the firmware upload utility (I have the tools somewhere to do Toshiba drives).
The real snag is of course that you can't speak to the drive in order to complete the firmware update unless you already have it on the right channel. The way around this is to use a slimline-IDE conversion connector and plug it into a desktop machine to do the firmware mod.
I can help with the Master/Slave thing for the price of return postage and if anybody is considering doing such a drive swap you can mail me the part number of the drive and I'll tell you the nearest fit CDRW.
To be honest if your Laptop's CD Drive is Secondary master then you needn't worry too much 90% of slimline drives are so configured.
Oh and one final thing is that I'd take care doing this trick with Consumer level Toshiba's (as in purchased from a high street store) some of them are very fussy about the models of drive they will boot from.