[P1] cd r&w for clamshell ibook

Jason Bennett jpbennett at mac.com
Wed Aug 20 06:23:58 PDT 2003


On Tuesday, August 19, 2003, fielder-bianco wrote:

> Does anyone know if the internal cd rom drive on a blueberry clamshell 
> can
> be swapped out with a cd r&w drive (burner) and if so where I can 
> purchase
> one? I have done some research at xlr8yourmac and owc and apple but 
> could
> only find external drives.

Hi Betty,

The internal cd rom drive on a blueberry ibook can indeed be upgrade to 
a cd-rw model. Several clamshell owners on this list have done the 
procedure, myself included.

If you plan to do the upgrade yourself, I recommend consulting one of 
the on-line guides that illustrate the steps in taking apart your 
laptop:

http://www.tznet.com/tittle/PHOTOS_1/iBook1.html  (not sure if this is 
available)
http://caslis.com/mac/ibook/ibdrive.html

Although they're aimed at upgrading the hard drive, they also get you 
to the point of taking out the CD-ROM unit.

I printed out such a guide, and taped the screws to the relevant parts 
of the picture, so when I had to put my tangerine back together, it was 
just a matter of following the pictures in reverse (it's also harder to 
forget the location/purpose of various screws this way).

I followed the advice of others and purchased a UJDA330 (Matshita) 
drive from an auction on eBay. Other models may work, but since others 
confirmed success with that model, I stuck with it, too.

xlr8yourmac has a couple of testimonials from folks who have installed 
a cd-rw in their iBook, so you might want to go back there and read 
over their experiences.

Best,

Jason



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