Replacing laptop CD drive: What connector do most drives use?

[RaiderJ]

I'm trying to replace my laptop's original CD-ROM drive, since it won't read burned discs. The system is an IBM Thinkpad 380ED.

I pulled the drive out of the system, and it looks fairly standard, but I want to make sure I can stick in another drive before I spend the money on one. The laptop's connection consists of a ribbon not unlike and IDE cable, but it has a connection for 50 pins, and then another 4 pins. This is what connects to the CD-ROM drive.

On the CD-ROM drive, there is a series of 50 and 4 pins to connect to the cable described above. The other end of this connector has a tiny ribbon connection to the actual mechanism of the CD-ROM.

So, is this a standard setup to where I can buy another CD-ROM drive? Hopefully one that read burned discs?

Thanks to anyone who can help!

 

[Gunbuster]

The connector at the bottom of the picture is the most common for laptop cdrom drives Text
AFAK it is just called an 50 pin ATAPI connector

 

[RaiderJ]

My connector looks a bit different than that... it has a 50 pin connector like the picture above for the IDE interface. Do all drives use that plug style connetor?

 

[corkyg]

Laptops usually have a proprietary interface embedded in a caddy or sled. The generic drive has to be mounted in one of those so slip in and out in most cases.