The HP spec sheet for the J6750 identifies the drive as "slim line DVD or
DVD/CD-RW combo drive". This is the same type of drive used in nearly all
notebook computers, blade servers, and some of the small Wintel desktop
computers. I have never seen one that does not have the IDE interface. If
you are looking for a replacement part, you do not need the prohibitively
expensive HP-branded spare part. Any commodity drive will do, as long as the
plastic front drive bezel matches the front of the computer. Many computers use
these drives along with specialized mounting brackets and/or interface adapters,
which can be removed to reveal the plain unadorned commodity drive... Ben Myers
On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:03:34 -0700, unixguru <unix_guru01@yahoo.com> wrote:
>What type of CDROM goes into a J6750 workstation? It has a small
>connector, but is it IDE?
> Any commodity drive will do, as long as the
> plastic front drive bezel matches the front of the computer.
Nope, it won't. The j6750 requires a drive that is set to either Master
or Cable Select. Most slimline drives don't have a jumper or switch for
setting the Master/Slave mode but require a certain firmware or are
fixed to a certain mode. Slimline drives are far from being easy
replaceable, and a j6750 won't boot from a drive that is configured as
slave or Inverted Cable Select. Since there are no jumpers or switches
on these drives to change that the chance is very high to end up with a
non-working drive.
Potentially an interesting revelation into the mondo bizarro of HP proprietary
equipment. Still, I would be willing to bet that if a J6750 drive was removed
from a system and stripped down to its basic commodity physical form factor, it
might still be a commodity drive. Having removed, disassembled, reassembled
and installed a decent number of these drives from many brands of systems, I
have found time and again that deep down inside all the brackets, mounting
screws, and connectors lies a standard form factor slim DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, or
other commodity drive.
It would be incredibly stupid of HP to have paid near-extortion manufacturing
costs to a drive manufacturer to place a jumper inside the drive housing or to
make another solder connection inside to have a fixed jumper setting of Master
or CS, especially given the low volume of J6750 systems ever produced compared
to the millions of HP notebooks cranked out. After all, any deviation on a
production line cranking out thousands of drives is expensive, possibly
requiring manual intervention on the shop floor. It would be less expensive
over all to hardwire the jumper setting into a special connector used to attach
the drive to the system's IDE channel. But then, J6750s were probably grossly
overpriced when new.
Gee, I would love to get my hands on a J6750 and tear it apart to see what its
CD-ROM interface really is... Ben Myers
On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:04:43 +0200, Benjamin Gawert <bgawert@gmx.de> wrote:
>* Ben Myers:
>
>> Any commodity drive will do, as long as the
>> plastic front drive bezel matches the front of the computer.
>
>Nope, it won't. The j6750 requires a drive that is set to either Master
>or Cable Select. Most slimline drives don't have a jumper or switch for
>setting the Master/Slave mode but require a certain firmware or are
>fixed to a certain mode. Slimline drives are far from being easy
>replaceable, and a j6750 won't boot from a drive that is configured as
>slave or Inverted Cable Select. Since there are no jumpers or switches
>on these drives to change that the chance is very high to end up with a
>non-working drive.
>
>Benjamin
> Potentially an interesting revelation into the mondo bizarro of HP proprietary
> equipment.
This has absolutely nothing to do with proprietary equipment, and also
nothing with HP.
> Still, I would be willing to bet that if a J6750 drive was removed
> from a system and stripped down to its basic commodity physical form factor, it
> might still be a commodity drive.
Of course it is a comodity drive. All J-Class machines use comodity drives.
> It would be incredibly stupid of HP to have paid near-extortion manufacturing
> costs to a drive manufacturer to place a jumper inside the drive housing or to
> make another solder connection inside to have a fixed jumper setting of Master
> or CS, especially given the low volume of J6750 systems ever produced compared
> to the millions of HP notebooks cranked out. After all, any deviation on a
> production line cranking out thousands of drives is expensive, possibly
> requiring manual intervention on the shop floor. It would be less expensive
> over all to hardwire the jumper setting into a special connector used to attach
> the drive to the system's IDE channel. But then, J6750s were probably grossly
> overpriced when new.
You might have disassembled many computers but you obviously don't know
much about slimline drives. FYI: while desktop optical drives usually do
have jumpers for Master/Slave/CS, modern slimline
DVDROM/DVD-CDRW/DVD+-RW drives don't (some few ancient slimline CDROM
drived did have a switch for that but that's it). And that has _nothing_
to do with HP and proprietary stuff. It's just that the configuration
for Master/Slave/CS is not changeable by jumper, but it's fixed either
by the hardware or by the firmware, depending on the drive.
Additionally, some slimline drives also use ICS (Inverted Cable Select)
which means they interpret the connector placement inverted.
The j6750s IDE bus is not Slave-capable, and it's meant for a single
optical drive only (disks are SCSI). It requires an optical drive that
is set to either Master or CS. A drive set to Slave or ICS doesn't work.
So that means if unixguru follows your advice and gets "any comodity
drive" he has a good chance to just fetch a drive that doesn't work
because it's configured to Slave or ICS. And since there is no jumper or
switch on these drives this configuration can't be changed easily.
So while it's possible to replace the j6750's comodity CDROM drive with
a comodity drive (preferrably a DVDROM or DVD+-RW) it would be stupid to
fetch just any drive that comes ahead. It's important that unixguru
makes sure that the drive he wants to buy is configured to Master or CS.
Thanks for answering my post. Now that it has been determined I can
use an IDE CDROM, it would be nice to know if anyone knows a brand
that would work. Needs to be bootable, because I need to install the
OS. SOunds like it needs to be a CDROM that is already set to Master
or Cable Select. Now I need to start searching. Anyone that's been
down that road to save me some time?
THe cable is a funky 50 pin IDE cable that looks like it provides IDE
connection, power, and whatever else all in one cable to keep it
compact. DO you think I'm ok as long as I get a slim line that has
that type of a cable?
I HAVE worked one helluva lot with SLIM CD-ROM drives, otherwise I would never
made made two posts on the subject, and now a third one.
We have absolutely no disagreement on one fundamental point. Slim optical
drives do not have jumpers on them. This leaves open exactly three
possibilities as to how a slim drive is configured as master, slave, cable
select, or even inverted cable select:
1. internal, via firmware, internal jumper or hardwired
2. a configuration jumper as part of the hardware added to a slim optical drive
to adopt it to the system in which it will be installed
3. cabling to the host system
That's about it. Unfortunately, I cannot advise the OP as to which brands and
models of slim optical drives would work in the J6750, because I have not done a
lot of trial-and-error testing of these drives to see how they show up in a
system. But I have been successful using commodity parts (slim optical and
otherwise) to avoid the typically atrociously high prices for manufacturer's
brand-name replacements. If the OP is faced with either scarce or very
expensive replacement parts, I think it is appropriate to encourage him to try a
commodity drive, preferably the same OEM brand used by HP in the J6750.
Are we clear on this subject now?
.... Ben Myers
On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:48:13 +0200, Benjamin Gawert <bgawert@gmx.de> wrote:
>* Ben Myers:
>
>> Potentially an interesting revelation into the mondo bizarro of HP proprietary
>> equipment.
>
>This has absolutely nothing to do with proprietary equipment, and also
>nothing with HP.
>
>> Still, I would be willing to bet that if a J6750 drive was removed
>> from a system and stripped down to its basic commodity physical form factor, it
>> might still be a commodity drive.
>
>Of course it is a comodity drive. All J-Class machines use comodity drives.
>
>> It would be incredibly stupid of HP to have paid near-extortion manufacturing
>> costs to a drive manufacturer to place a jumper inside the drive housing or to
>> make another solder connection inside to have a fixed jumper setting of Master
>> or CS, especially given the low volume of J6750 systems ever produced compared
>> to the millions of HP notebooks cranked out. After all, any deviation on a
>> production line cranking out thousands of drives is expensive, possibly
>> requiring manual intervention on the shop floor. It would be less expensive
>> over all to hardwire the jumper setting into a special connector used to attach
>> the drive to the system's IDE channel. But then, J6750s were probably grossly
>> overpriced when new.
>
>You might have disassembled many computers but you obviously don't know
>much about slimline drives. FYI: while desktop optical drives usually do
>have jumpers for Master/Slave/CS, modern slimline
>DVDROM/DVD-CDRW/DVD+-RW drives don't (some few ancient slimline CDROM
>drived did have a switch for that but that's it). And that has _nothing_
>to do with HP and proprietary stuff. It's just that the configuration
>for Master/Slave/CS is not changeable by jumper, but it's fixed either
>by the hardware or by the firmware, depending on the drive.
>Additionally, some slimline drives also use ICS (Inverted Cable Select)
>which means they interpret the connector placement inverted.
>
>The j6750s IDE bus is not Slave-capable, and it's meant for a single
>optical drive only (disks are SCSI). It requires an optical drive that
>is set to either Master or CS. A drive set to Slave or ICS doesn't work.
>So that means if unixguru follows your advice and gets "any comodity
>drive" he has a good chance to just fetch a drive that doesn't work
>because it's configured to Slave or ICS. And since there is no jumper or
>switch on these drives this configuration can't be changed easily.
>
>So while it's possible to replace the j6750's comodity CDROM drive with
>a comodity drive (preferrably a DVDROM or DVD+-RW) it would be stupid to
>fetch just any drive that comes ahead. It's important that unixguru
>makes sure that the drive he wants to buy is configured to Master or CS.
>
>Benjamin
> Thanks for answering my post. Now that it has been determined I can
> use an IDE CDROM, it would be nice to know if anyone knows a brand
> that would work.
Since the average product cycle of these devices is very small and lots
of drives are offered in several different versions I recommend you ask
in a notebook newsgroup for a good current slimline drive that uses
Master or CS.
> Needs to be bootable, because I need to install the
> OS.
All these drives are bootable.
> SOunds like it needs to be a CDROM that is already set to Master
> or Cable Select.
I wouldn't recommend to buy a CDROM any more. Slimline CDROM drives are
not made any more, and DVDROM drives are cheap today. Besides that, even
if it's officially unsupported a DVDROM drive lets you run HP-UX 11i v2
should the wish arise at one time. 11i v2 only comes on DVD media.
> Now I need to start searching. Anyone that's been
> down that road to save me some time?
The last time I did that to j-class machines has been some time ago, I
used to buy a ****load of TEAC DVDROM/CDRW combo drives at that time.
None of them did fail until today.
> THe cable is a funky 50 pin IDE cable that looks like it provides IDE
> connection, power, and whatever else all in one cable to keep it
> compact. DO you think I'm ok as long as I get a slim line that has
> that type of a cable?
All slimline drives do have this connector. It's the same connector you
find on notebook ATA hard drives. There isn't something else, it's a
standard.
> I HAVE worked one helluva lot with SLIM CD-ROM drives, otherwise I would never
> made made two posts on the subject, and now a third one.
>
> We have absolutely no disagreement on one fundamental point. Slim optical
> drives do not have jumpers on them. This leaves open exactly three
> possibilities as to how a slim drive is configured as master, slave, cable
> select, or even inverted cable select:
>
> 1. internal, via firmware, internal jumper or hardwired
right.
> 2. a configuration jumper as part of the hardware added to a slim optical drive
> to adopt it to the system in which it will be installed
This only could work with CS/ICS configured drives, and I'm not aware of
any notebook or computer using something like that.
> 3. cabling to the host system
Also this only works with CS/ICS configured drives.
> That's about it. Unfortunately, I cannot advise the OP as to which brands and
> models of slim optical drives would work in the J6750, because I have not done a
> lot of trial-and-error testing of these drives to see how they show up in a
> system. But I have been successful using commodity parts (slim optical and
> otherwise) to avoid the typically atrociously high prices for manufacturer's
> brand-name replacements. If the OP is faced with either scarce or very
> expensive replacement parts, I think it is appropriate to encourage him to try a
> commodity drive, preferably the same OEM brand used by HP in the J6750.
Why should it be preferrably the same OEM brand like the original drive?
There is no sense behind this. Just because the new DVD drive
(slimline CDROMs aren't made any more) has the same brand name like the
old original CDROM drive doesn't help anything. Especially optical
drives show a very varying quality level, so it's very shortsighted to
buy brand X because the same brand made good products years ago. Today
lots of drive manufacturers just OEM mechanics or even complete drives
from others, so it's not easy to find a reliable drive. And especially
since all ATA slimline drives that are configured correctly do work with
the j6750 buying the same brand that the old drive had is just nonsense.
The machine doesn't give a **** on what brand the drive is. Just get a
reliable and correctly configured slimline drive that fits the needs and
budget.
> Are we clear on this subject now?
You tell me. I just responded to your posting simply because I felt that
you gave the OP a bad advise. You say you know a lot about slimline
drives but still you didn't told the OP one word about the issues
regarding Master/Slave mode he will run into. Your comment that any
comodity drive will do is just wrong, if he'd followed this advice he
very likely would have ended up with a drive that doesn't work for his
purpose simply because he didn't check the Master/Slave configuration.
And not all shops out there in the world allow returns so in the worst
case he would have lost money for nothing.
I think you've made a much larger issue than really exists here, but I will
defer this time to your infinite wisdom, knowledge and unmitigated arrogance.
.... Ben Myers
On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:58:07 +0200, Benjamin Gawert <bgawert@gmx.de> wrote:
>* Ben Myers:
>
>> I HAVE worked one helluva lot with SLIM CD-ROM drives, otherwise I would never
>> made made two posts on the subject, and now a third one.
>>
>> We have absolutely no disagreement on one fundamental point. Slim optical
>> drives do not have jumpers on them. This leaves open exactly three
>> possibilities as to how a slim drive is configured as master, slave, cable
>> select, or even inverted cable select:
>>
>> 1. internal, via firmware, internal jumper or hardwired
>
>right.
>
>> 2. a configuration jumper as part of the hardware added to a slim optical drive
> > to adopt it to the system in which it will be installed
>
>This only could work with CS/ICS configured drives, and I'm not aware of
>any notebook or computer using something like that.
>
>> 3. cabling to the host system
>
>Also this only works with CS/ICS configured drives.
>
>> That's about it. Unfortunately, I cannot advise the OP as to which brands and
>> models of slim optical drives would work in the J6750, because I have not done a
>> lot of trial-and-error testing of these drives to see how they show up in a
>> system. But I have been successful using commodity parts (slim optical and
>> otherwise) to avoid the typically atrociously high prices for manufacturer's
>> brand-name replacements. If the OP is faced with either scarce or very
>> expensive replacement parts, I think it is appropriate to encourage him to try a
>> commodity drive, preferably the same OEM brand used by HP in the J6750.
>
>Why should it be preferrably the same OEM brand like the original drive?
> There is no sense behind this. Just because the new DVD drive
>(slimline CDROMs aren't made any more) has the same brand name like the
>old original CDROM drive doesn't help anything. Especially optical
>drives show a very varying quality level, so it's very shortsighted to
>buy brand X because the same brand made good products years ago. Today
>lots of drive manufacturers just OEM mechanics or even complete drives
>from others, so it's not easy to find a reliable drive. And especially
>since all ATA slimline drives that are configured correctly do work with
>the j6750 buying the same brand that the old drive had is just nonsense.
>The machine doesn't give a **** on what brand the drive is. Just get a
>reliable and correctly configured slimline drive that fits the needs and
>budget.
>
>> Are we clear on this subject now?
>
>You tell me. I just responded to your posting simply because I felt that
>you gave the OP a bad advise. You say you know a lot about slimline
>drives but still you didn't told the OP one word about the issues
>regarding Master/Slave mode he will run into. Your comment that any
>comodity drive will do is just wrong, if he'd followed this advice he
>very likely would have ended up with a drive that doesn't work for his
>purpose simply because he didn't check the Master/Slave configuration.
>And not all shops out there in the world allow returns so in the worst
>case he would have lost money for nothing.
>
>Benjamin
CDROM for J6750 
Linear Mode
