Upgrading the CD drive on a Gateway Laptop

[Polishwonder74]

Howdy, fellas!

I don't do a lot of work on laptops, so I need a little advice:

I'm trying to put a new CD drive into an old Gateway Solo 1450, and from what I'm seeing, it says that it is not upgrade-able. Nothing here indicates that it can be switched out for a new one, but aren't these just a standard size (slim or ultra slim)?

I'd really like to take this CD drive out and replace it with this bad boy. Can anyone confirm that this will work?

Thanks for humoring me!

:beer:

 

[Peter]

In general, the drives are all the same physical size. The front bezels are often a customized shape, but if you won't mind something rectangular sticking a bit out of that rounded case shape, this doesn't matter either.

The machine's BIOS also won't mind whether it's a CDROM or a DVD-RW drive. They handle the same for a BIOS.

What does matter is, slim drives don't have configuration jumpers. They come factory configured for master, slave, cable-select or inverse cable-select. Most of the time, you need one of the latter two - and if you got the wrong one and the BIOS doesn't scan for both alternatives, then the drive won't be seen. This is something you'll find out by trial and error only.