Pls help SW guy w/ HW question: CD-ROM drive repl. on Blade 100

I have been programming for close to 25 years, but I am very naive with hardware. My home computer is a Sun Blade 100. I bought it right when it came out, so it still has a read-only CD-ROM drive.

Discussion groups make it sound rather easy to replace that with a RW CD-ROM/DVD drive. But I remember hearing about device drivers long ago, and wonder why I see no mention now. For example, see www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/pdf/806-6637-12.pdf.

I'm guessing that the IDE connection has a standard driver that is already installed (so it might not matter), but every drive in the stores lists system requirements that refer to windows or Macs. Is that only because they come with additional desktop software for writing to the drives, or do I really need to be careful what I buy? And if so, what should I be looking for?

Thanks

[869 byte] By [RegExpGuy] at [2007-11-26 7:29:07]

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# 1

It is not too hard to replace the stock drive with a DVD drive. They use the same drivers. The catch is, however, not all drives are bootable.

In my Blade 100, I replaced it with a Liteon SOHD-16P9S 16x DVD-ROM. The original CD was also a Liteon, so I hoped it would work. It worked like a charm.

swilson at 2007-7-6 19:21:07 >

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# 2

Thanks for your assistance.If I may trouble you (or anyone) for a minor clarification: Am I correct to understand that "bootable" refers to booting directly from the DVD rather than simply using it to install the upgraded OS on the hard drive?Thanks again.

RegExpGuy at 2007-7-6 19:21:07 >

# 3

Actually, he means both--or rather the reason you would want to boot from the cd/dvd is to install/reinstall the OS to your hard drive (there are other ways but none as simple). I do not know of a Solaris installation that you can boot from and run on cd (as you can with some windows/linux installations), but maybe someone has done that.

So, if you wanted to use it to boot from the cd/dvd to install a fresh copy of solaris, he is saying you have to make sure it works. In my experience, many on this machine work (liteon, sony, toshiba, etc)

whomever123 at 2007-7-6 19:21:07 >

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Pls help SW guy w/ HW question: CD-ROM drive repl. on Blade 100

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