[Luca Rescigno]

FS: Slot loading combo drive from Mac mini, older PC laptops

I'm clearing out some extra stuff of mine and I've found a couple extra things I need to sell.

First up is a slot loading, slimline Combo drive out of my Mac mini. I decided shortly after purchasing it to upgrade to a DVD burner, so now I have the Combo drive from it. It's been lightly used and works fine. The model is a Panasonic CW-8123. There are pictures available at these links:

Front of drive
Back of drive, showing connection interface
Label on drive, showing model number

I would think that this drive would work in most Macs that use slim, slot loading drives, but I can't guarantee it. If you're not sure if your slot-loading iMac or Cube or PowerBook uses the correct interface, then just go to Other World Computing and buy one from them.

I'm asking $65 shipped for this drive. I will ship it via USPS Priority Mail upon receipt of payment (preferably through Paypal).

The other item is a pair of old PC laptops. They are HP OmniBooks, labeled XE2-DD. One is working, one is not. They are mostly identical, except the broken one has no RAM or hard drive. Here are their specs:

433 MHz Celeron processor
256 MB of RAM
20 GB hard drive
12", 800x600 active matrix screen
One battery each
One power adapter each

So you get two batteries and two AC adapters, which can be very handy. I've only tested one of the batteries and it seems to last a little less than an hour. Don't count on this being the perfect laptop for mobility, but at least it's cheap. Because honestly, if you were going to spend more money you'd just get a Mac, right?

I will advise you that on the working laptop, the screen is a little smudged in the upper left hand corner and in the center of the lower right quadrant. They are not extremely bothersome, to me at least, but the screen is a little smudged and I haven't been able to get rid of it. It was like that when I got it a few months ago.

They're nothing special, but you get an entire spare laptop for parts. On top of that, I'm including a Belkin 10/100 ethernet card and an Enterasys 802.11b wireless card. That should be enough to get you connected to the internet wherever. I'd recommend installing Win98, Win2k, or some version of Linux. I put Windows XP on it since that's the only one I have access to, and while it did run, it was pretty slow. XP is just under the limit for what you'd want to use every day on this thing.

My asking price is $140 shipped. Again I will ship these via USPS Priority Mail upon receipt of payment. Oh, and here are a couple of pictures:

Both laptops and all the gear you get with them
Both laptops, opened

[omar96]

Does that optical drive, since it's a slimline, work in laptops? If so, would it run in a Tibook?

[Luca Rescigno]

I did a search at the XLR8 Your Mac drive database for CW-8123 and found several reports of this drive working properly in the expansion bays of Pismos, despite some difficulties with the installation. One TiBook 667 MHz owner said it also worked fine in his, but both an iMac owner and an iBook owner reported problems. The drive appears to be hard-coded to the Master jumper setting, so if it's put into a computer with a single IDE bus and the hard drive coded to Master as well (such as in an iBook), it will not work. I don't know if slot-loading iMacs suffer from that problem, but the guy who said it didn't work in his iMac said it was because the connector wasn't lined up properly.

Given these reports, I can't guarantee that it will work 100% with your machine. First of all, I don't even know which version of the TiBook you have (though I assume it has just a DVD-ROM drive if you're interested in buying the drive). It does sound like the TiBook is a good bet, since it's supposed to have two IDE buses, and the master/slave jumper problem won't come up. And it's obviously fully compatible with OS X since it shipped with my mini.

Sorry for not giving you much confidence. I'd rather lose a sale than sell it to someone and be forced to either take it back or tell them tough luck if it doesn't work. But if you do a bit more research and are confident it'll work, it is a pretty good deal on just the bare drive. The cheapest I could find it on Froogle was $80.

[nshank]

I have a friend that's been looking for a bezel load DVD drive. That said, can I get 24 hour dibs so I can check w/ him?
Nick

[nshank]

After talking to my friend, I will take the drive. Email me if you would --> chubblez(AT)gmail(DOT)com
Nick

[chipchen]

if that falls through, I'm interested.

where did you buy the superdrive from, BTW?

[OneMacGuy]

Originally Posted by Luca Rescigno

My asking price is $140 shipped. Again I will ship these via USPS Priority Mail upon receipt of payment. Oh, and here are a couple of pictures:

Both laptops, opened

I'll take the laptops if you can take paypal.