Anyone know of anyone ever successfully installing a standard laptop optical drive in a slot-loading(Kihei) iMac?
Please, don't try to tell me they already have laptop drives in them, 'coz they don't.
Anonymous
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Ummm, yes, the optical drive is a standard laptop slot-loading drive. Yes, there is an adapter board attached to the back of the drive to convert it to use a 50-pin ribbon cable, but if you swap the board onto any other laptop optical drive, it will work. Don't believe me? I'll rip out the DVD drive from an iMac DV and take pics side by side with another laptop drive.
It's not quite standard.
Ever looked at the connector? It's upside-down. Meaning connecting the standard iMac interconnect board to it means it fires off rightwards and collides with the down converter board.
What I mean is, has anybody ever mounted a standard laptop drive, wrong-way-up connector and all, in an iMac DV?
Noone's ever done this?! You gotta be kidding me!
You'll just have to google a little harder.
Not having any details in front of me (and being unwilling to strip my daughter's iMac 400 just to find out!) I'd suggest using a common garden-variety laptop-optical-to-desktop-IDE adapter board. Might have to mod a cable but that shouldn't be too tough. Well, you'll have to fab a bracket too I reckon, being as how the original iMac optical isn't the same shape as the laptop-style replacement.
dan k