Aftermarket DVD Writer for nc8430?

I have a nc8430, and the Panasonic DVD writer is, put in a mild way, not the best drive to deal with DVD zoning issues, so I plan to buy another drive for the laptop.

Now I decided on a Pioneer DVR-K16, but I wonder if it fits...?

 

What do you mean "zoning issues?" All drives are only allowed to change their zones a certain number of times.

 

Yes, but after I have finished the amount of changes I have to change one right?

 

It is hard to say without physically having a look at what is currently installed in your notebook.

I did such a swap last year on my Voodoo M855 that had (Drum rolls please!) a Panasonic piece of **** DVD writer. I selected a Nec ND-6500A at the time as it appeared to have the most aftermarket support (Second Source Firmware) and never regretted my move. I have since upgrade again to a Nec ND6650 and the ND 6500A now resides in the external CD-Rom Combo housing for a Dell Latitude C400.

A word of caution, swapping Notebook DVD drive is very different then desktop computers.

Beside the different physical size, most laptop/notebook drives have a single connector in the back that looks like a micro miniatures D shape connector with a small slot instead of pins.

The other difference is that the Drive Select Jumper (Master/Slave) is not present on notebook drive. These are configured in their firmware and some of them are reversed configure.

Firmware availability is a major problems as most of those DVD notebook drives only supply firmware updates to the Notebook Manufacurer.

On my particular swap, I had to do some soldering to reverse the Drive Select has my notebook was requiring a Slave configuration to work properly as a Master Drive on the 2nd Ide channel.

A very good place to go for information on these kind of swap, firmware updates is at the following website;

http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/

Another site with great information, pictures, instructions (Sorry not specific to your particular model)

http://repair4laptop.org/notebook_optical_drive_cd_dvd_mo.html

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9612

Found some specifics with your model #;
http://www.bixnet.com/insldvcodr.html


It can be done but you will have to do all the footwork of finding the information ( What is the current model of your drive, it's size, does it have the standard notebook connector?, do you need a special faceplate for your notebook?). Sorry I have more questions then answer ans since I am the visual kind, it is kind of hard to tell you exactly what you need and thesteps reuired to proceed with the swap.

Best regards

frenchnew

 

Something like AnyDVD or DVDRegionFree can get around the region issue.