Anyone know anything about these.

So far I've worked out it's a panasonic drive and that I'll have to swap the bezel, but I keep reading things about having the correct firmware to force it to be a master or slave on various laptops.

So Assuming I can get hold of a more modern slimline panasonic drive and the bezel fits, will it work or do I have to find one that's configured to master/slave.

If that is the case I don't suppose anyone knows if this is a master/slave or a supplier that isn't going to ask £100 for a DVD-ROM/CR-R drive.

Ta

Most laptop DVD drives are now generic, ie. you can buy any one and as long as you can workout how to take the laptop drive out then the swap is easy.

Laptop drives are available all over, I replaced an old DVD Rom drive recently in an old laptop and it now has a nice shiney DVD recorder in it.

eg.

http://svp.co.uk/product/liteon_dsw2080_slimline_8x_dvd_writer_tsunami046

I'd steer away from a panasonic/mat****a/matsu****a drive, the seem to be a bit ropy. The one in my toshiba laptop is ridiculously piccy about what discs it works with and a bit of googling seems to suggest that this is a common complaint. Maybe the newer are better though.

Some cd is just refuses to read even though they work fine in other computers I have and also recording discs is hard work, it only seems to like cheap recordable discs.

And the sweat filter on this site doesn't like them either

I know a generic drive will fit, my main question is does anyone know about specific firmware being required to make the drifve the IDE master/slave.

I've read in a few places that if the drive has the wrong firmware you end up with the laptop having both IDE devices being master or slave and so the machine not working at all.

As for the panasonic drives, I'd like to but they have a different way of attaching the faceplate so it will have to be one of those or another drive with the same mechanism.

My A110 has 2 IDE controllers, the DVD drive sits on one, and the HDD on another. This is usually the case with all laptops, so you will find that most drives you purchased are Master anyway. Those that are changeable are done in a simillar way to a normal desktop drive, via jumpers or dip switches.

I was given the impression that the tosh machines mostly required slave.

Oh well I'll find a drive and if worse comes to the worse I can always short out pins 45 and 47 on the IDE connector to for it to slave.

Ta