Attempting to put DVD in old laptop.....connectivity problems

[Black88GTA]

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 420CDT (It's crappy, but a new laptop is not high on the priority list at the moment.) It originally came with a Sony XM-1202B internal CD-ROM drive installed. I'm trying to upgrade it to DVD. I have a Toshiba SD-C2002 internal DVD drive that has nearly the same physical dimensions as the Sony I'm removing. (The only difference is that the new drive is 1/4" shorter.)

The problem is, the Sony CD drive uses a standard 44 pin IDE interface and an external audio connector to plug into the caddy, which in turn uses a (Toshiba proprietary?) connector about 2 1/4" long that plugs into the laptop. The DVD drive I want to use has a 50 pin laptop ATAPI connector that's about 3cm long. Does anyone know of a way I can get the DVD drive to plug into the slot where the CD drive was? I looked at the laptop CD drive to IDE converters on Ebay, but those won't work - those require an external power supply, and the connectors are in the wrong place. I need a connector that has the 50 pin ATAPI back to back with the Toshiba connector.

Anyone know if this Toshiba connector is in fact proprietary? It's molded of brown plastic, has the number "5566A" stamped onto it in small white letters, and has a single strip of pins right in the center. The row has pins on the top and bottom of it, and there's 41 pairs.

Anyone know anything about this? I've been looking on Ebay, but NOBODY posts pics of the back connectors :|.

 

[jschuk]

What you need is the:
P000216280 PCB FSTCD4 CD-ROM Cable Connector, B36076941015
That is the cable that should already have for your 420CDT if you had the proper 6X drive instead of the Toshiba XM1202B 4X drive (belongs to Sat Pro 400/410). The 50 pin connector is the standard. Everthing since the 6X came out has used the 50 pin connector.
Now don't expect to be able to play DVD movies on that. 100MHz is nowhere near enough to decode MPG2. The PCMCIA slot is supposed to be Zoomed Video compatible, so you might be able to use a decoder card (no cardbus allowed).
Want to speed it up? The pictures on the page should be explanation enough.

 

[Black88GTA]

jschuk, thanks for the info. Do you know of anywhere I could see pics of the cable/adapter you're describing? And do you know where I could get one (preferably as cheap as possible ).I'm looking for something where I could just snap the drive right into the slot the old drive came out of. And you're right, it is a Toshiba drive . I don't know why I was thinking it was a Sony? Too much Ebay in the last couple hours, I think...

Anyways, I knew that the P100 wouldn't handle the movies by itself, so I got a 16 bit PCMCIA DVD hardware decoder card also. Even if I can't get full-screen movie playback (which would be nice), I'd still be semi-satisfied with windowed playback. Right now, I'm just trying to get everything in order so I can get this stuff installed!

As far as speeding it up goes....it gets pretty hot as it is. I don't know if I wanna rock the boat by O/Cing it any, I think it may melt! For what I use the PC for, it's ok for now - mainly MS Office, IE, datalogging software, etc. Anything more, and I may have to replace it, which isn't in the budget at this point.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Black88GTA]

I notice you're a Toshiba tech....so, I'm gonna pick your brains for a minute here...

Were there different revisions of the XM-1402B CD-ROM drive? I found this one on Ebay...

This one looks like it's got the old-school connector on it, but I've seen other XM-1402Bs on Ebay that have the smaller 50 pin one. I'd be inclined to think that the pictures in the auction are wrong, but...the stickers on the top of the unit match up in both pics, and the front bezel is definitely an updated one from the drive I have. Would this be a case of just making sure I get one of the later revisions with the proper connection and swapping the caddy over to the DVD unit?

I did a dogpile search, and the cheapest I could find the part number you gave me was $25 +shipping, so I'll probably buy an entire drive w/caddy attached off Ebay for under $25 and swap the part I need over...then possibly put the bare drive right back on the 'Bay .

 

[jschuk]

All the 4X I have ever seen had the "old school" connector. I have never known any Sat Pro 420 to get hot, at least by my standards. You could probably take out the fan in that thing and never have problems. I could get the cable, but it would probably be around $25.00 with shipping.

P.S. the 4X drives are the only ones I have seen that have a manual push button to eject the drive. All 6X and newer use a "soft" button which requires the drive to be powered.

 

[Black88GTA]

I did a little more digging, and I found out that the connector on the Toshiba SD-2002 DVD drive I have is a JAE connector. I looked around a bit more, and from what I found online, the JAE connector wasn't used in the Toshiba CD-ROM lineup until the XM-1502B model drive. The connector in the 1402 looks to be similar to the older style standard IDE-type connector, but with a few more pins added to one side, instead of the separate audio plug.

Do you (or anyone) know if the brown connector on my 1202B (the one that goes directly into the laptop) is proprietary or not? i.e. can I use a drive w/JAE connector that was pulled from a NEC Versa, IBM Thinkpad, or Gateway Solo, for example (that still has the connector attached to the drive) and plug that straight into my 420?

So, in a nutshell, I'm looking for something that will connect the JAE connector on my DVD drive with the internal Selectbay connection on my laptop. The two connectors have to be back to back, and they both have to line up on one side. This is driving me nuts, because the pictures everyone posts on Ebay are only of the front/top, they're always blurry, and they never include important information! :|

I took some pics to illustrate my dilemma because it's so much easier to see what I need to do with them!
Here's a picture of the Selectbay connector (top) and the JAE connector on the DVD drive
Here's a picture of the laptop Selectbay connector by itself (please excuse the dirty fingernails, I was working on my car earlier
Here's a pic of how the current connector doesn't match up to the new drive JAE connector
Here's a pic of the other side of the Selectbay connector piece
And finally, here's a pic of the old 1202B drive I'm removing directly on top of the new DVD drive w/o the Selectbay connector attached.

I tried to take pics of everything that was relevant! If anyone knows what I need to get the new drive to work in the computer, please post up!