Gateway CDRW.

[Budfred]

A friend of mine has a Gateway notebook that he has been told by Gateway has a dead CDRW. They will graciously replace it for about $350 so he is wanting to know what other options he has. He has made appropriate apologies for not asking me before placing it in their evil hands, so I am trying to see what I can do to reduce the cost. He has already paid Gateway about $200 for cleaning the system up and figures if he has to give them another $350 he might just as well have bought a new notebook.

Anyway, I looked at some notebook sized CDRW drives and they run about $160 to $180. He doesn't know the model yet, so I am waiting for that info to see how to proceed. In the meanwhile I was wondering if anyone knows if Gateway notebooks will accept standard notebook CDRWs or if they have some sort of proprietary configuration which will make that impossible. Any ideas???

I also want to check out the drive before he lays out any more cash...

Thanks!

[deddard]

If it is a notebook, and he has USB2 on the machine (may be possible through PCMCIA if not?) then the easiest way to do things is to get an external CDR/RW. - the USB2 spec will take care of any discrepancies in the system.
I have a similar problem myself, in that my laptop has a CDROM drive that I'd like to replace with a CDRW, but all the advice seems to be avoid it - it will cost a fortune.
When you say that you looked at some notebook-sized cdrws, do you mean external, or did you manage to find some standard internal device? if so, please let me know|

[Budfred]

deddard,

Here is one site and I believe this was the other site , but I can't get it to load properly on my home computer. I did a Google search with "notebook cdrw" as the search term. The quotes are necessary or you will get anything that includes the terms notebook AND cdrw...

[jjoel]

i'd look through ebay to see if you can get a drive from them.

[pawprint]

Budfred ,found this liteon cdrw/dvd combo at the victor computer site listed for $89.70.
Also did a search at the gateway site re: proprietary configuration info, and have a link from their tech support site here. Click on the support home button. Hope this helps.
cheers, ~pawprint~

[Budfred]

Thanks for the responses, I had lost track of this thread and forgot I started it... memory ain't what it used to be...

Anyway, my friend talked to a supervisor at a Gateway outlet and got them to install the drive at the original price they quoted him which was much better than what they had changed it to, so he had them do it. I'll let him know about that Liteon, but I think he is pretty well settled now....

[BBS]

Even though this thread is supposed to be closed I would like to add one info here.

Basically there are two version fo the CD drives for the notebooks: Slim drive and ultra-slim drive. If the drives are of the same type then most probably they are interchangable with some modification.

You need to use the CD drive adapter and the IDE connector from the previus drive in the notebook in the new drive.