BluRay on Z61p ?

I recently upgraded from a still going strong maxed out 770Z [PIII850@700, 512MB RAM] to a secondhand Z61p and immidiately questions came to mind on how to max this beauty out.

I got my eyes on the FRU#39T2853 Ultrabay Enhanced BluRay first of all.
Some places it says, that it will work across the R61, T61, Z61 machines apart from some models. It will fit in a Z61p, but I also read on the Lenovo site, that it will only work in machines with Nvidia GPU's.

Looking through the ltwbook.pdf, the Z61p seems to be some sort of a modified T60p with Ultrabay Enhanced and a 15.4" WUXGA LCD.

Also the newer FRU#43R9150 BluRay for the later R400-R500 series are under consideration, but they're SATA based and shouldn't work on the Z61p as far as I can see.

What's fiction, what's fact ? Am I on the right track here ?
Is it possible to make a 39T2853 work in a Z61p ?

My Z61p is a 0674-KSG, Core2Duo T7200, ATI V5200.

Thanks in advance.

 

I thought all z series use a ultrabay slim device, the enhanced device is used by the Advanced dock and the R series, it is too thick for the slim slots (9.5 mm versus 12.7 mm). Or maybe as you said the Z61p does use ultrabay enhanced drive, i don't have a Z61p so you would know better since you can easily check the drive

ZaZ have a Bluray burner drive in his machine R60 with the ATI GPU, so i am not sure what Lenovo posted is warranted, they probably never tested in the old machine or that was a typo.

The drive in the R400 and R500 won't work, as they use a SATA interface, as opposed to the PATA interface of the previous thinkpads.

 

Thanks lead_org.

Yeah, prior to buying this beauty, I had a look at the Z61p page on ThinkWiki. There it's an Ultrabay Slim machine, but it's really an Ultrabay Enhanced machine with the ability to use Ultrabay Slim as well.
It's clearly 12,7 mm in height when I'm looking at it. More than a centimeter.
Other machines in this league only offers Ultrabay Slim, with the ability to use Ultrabay Enhanced in the Advanced Dock.

I won't fall into the trap of trying the R400/500 drive. I'm now aware of the SATA/PATA issue, so it's not an option any longer.

I'll PM ZaZ and hear what he has to say, but it seems like the safe path to walk getting the 39T2853. If he's got it working on a R60 with ATI, then the sky is clearing up. Thank you for this piece of information. It's really appreciated, thanks so much.
I agree. IBM/Lenovo most likely never testet the drive in other machines, but have the typo made, in order to be precautious.

 

good luck, i am pretty sure it will work, but a confirmation with ZaZ will surely put any anxiety aside.

 

Thanks.

I've been hovering around in here for some time and wondered who this crazy guy were. The one with the empty bankaccount and ThinkPads for wallpaper. Now I know. He's not that crazy at all. Insightful and helpful are better terms. I thank you.

ZaZ won't answer questions through PM. I don't blame him. It's timeconsuming. I hope however, that he will throw in a few words.

Anxiety ain't that bad. We're adults

 

The drive will fill all R series and Z series except the Z61t or Z60t, which use the slim optical drives like the T series.

The X1600, which the V5200 is based on, supports offloading of decoding to the GPU, but I don't know if because of the drivers or something else it works the same. I can tell you I get no help from the GPU when watching Blu-ray discs. As a result CPU usage can get quite high during playback. If you don't have one of the T7x00 Core 2 Duos I'd recommend getting one. In my experience it runs better in XP than the Vista. AnyDVD helps too.

 

Interesting !

Okay. I've got a T7200 Core2Duo in mine, so it's not a problem.

Yes I've read the V5200 is related to the X1600. I think I recall someone trying tweaked X1600 drivers, but can't remember for what purpose.
There's some research to be done there on chip-level. Perhaps it's just software related, but the GPU could also have wires removed, so time will tell eventually.
I will take a closer look at the ltwbook.pdf. It would probably not reveal anything. Researching this forum, thinkpads@BillMorrow, the Lenovo Community and cross searching Google are my paths to wander.
There must be a way ! There just must.

I'll throw a note to ThinkWiki. The Z61p is in fact Ultrabay Enhanced.

Thank you ZaZ. That was much appreciated information.

 

X1xxx series can't decode the Blu ray natively, which is where the Penryn Core 2 Duo chips helps.... the X4500 was the first integrated GPU to do native blu ray decoding.

 

Disregard this post.

 

is anyone saying that the T7xxx is the Penryn chip?

 

I may have misunderstood your post, but I assumed by "the" that you were referring to the T7200.

A little edit wouldn't hurt.
....which is where Penryn Core 2 Duo chips help.....

Disregard my previous post to prevent off topic posts.