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> I wish to buy a CD Romdrive for my Thinkpad 760 LD but cannot decide
> whether to purchase the IBM internal version or an external PCMCIA or
> parallel port drive.
>
> If anyone has experience of any please could they share those
> experiences with me to assist in my decision.
I recently purchased a Sony 4X CD-ROM Discman (one of the refurbished
ones that Insight was selling recently) for my 760C. The unit itself
works fine, but there are two annoyances:
1. The connection cable is too thick at the PCMCIA card end, making
it impossible to use the unit at the same time as another PCMCIA
card that requires an external connector. I called Sony Canada
about this, and got a polite "no, we've never heard of problems
like that before; that's the only cable we have". Plastic surgery
on the cable may fix this problem, but I haven't had time to try.
2. Power. As someone else on the list remarked, it's irritating to
try to locate an electrical outlet that can handle two largish
AC adapters. On the other hand, the Sony does come with a
clip-on pack that lets you insert 4 AA batteris and run it from
that. You can also buy an internal Li-Ion battery for the unit,
too, which fits right inside the drive, for another $60 US or so.
On the plus side, the PCMCIA card that comes with the unit is reputedly
a standard Adaptec SlimSCSI 1460A, which is handy for using the unit
for other devices. You do have to purchase an additional cable from
Adaptec, though. Also, you can use the drive as a regular CD-player,
when it's not connected to the computer.
In all, for $120 US (refurbished), I'm reaonably pleased with it.
I've used it with Linux and Win95 so far.
Since I have an additional hard disk in the UltraBay on a semi-permanent
basis, an external CD-ROM works well for me. On the other hand, my 760C
won't accomodate an internal CD-ROM anyway.
--
Tim Tyhurst tim@excelsior.com