Replacing Toshiba Satellite R15 Slim SelectBay DVD

[nikko]

Before starting, I have to thank Carlos Hidalgo for helpping me on this. Without him, I would have wasted one Philips slim DVD-RW.

I own a Toshiba Satellite R15-S822 Tablet Notebook PC; it comes with a Panasonic DVD/CD-RW combo drive (Model #: UJDA760 , Part #: G8CC0001X411). I always wanted to upgrade to a DVD-RW, since I hate carrying those extra dongles and adaptors. However, the expensive US$ 150 price tag of the Toshiba SelectBay (PA3359U-2DV2) DVD±RW Burner had kept me from the idea for a long time.

One day, I happened to find a PHILIPS 8X DVD-R Slim DVD Burner (SPD8005BM/17) priced at US$57 plus shipping. I bought one and pop it into my Toshiba R15 and I got a nice IDE #1 error. First, I suspect it to be a Master/Slave problem. Since this is a jumperless drive and I found no help on Philips website, I tried Google it and I found a nice article posted by Carlos (http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?p=206562). After reading the article, I opened my Philips drive and confirmed that my Philips SPD8005BM/17 DVD-RW is indeed an OEM variant of Lite-On SSM-8515S.

By the way, if you have a choice, please do not buy the Philips drive; buy a Lite-On one instead. Lite-On released a lot of useful utility programs that only work on Lite-On drives. If you got a Lite-On OEM product branded after Philips like I did, you are almost hopeless. In fact, Philips tech support is awful on their OEM products. I contacted them asking help on this issue; all they can say is SORRY. They do not even have the original factory firmware. They would just refer you to Lite-On and Lite-On cannot help you since all of their firmware ahd programs are for Lite-On only.

Anyway, to change the Master/Slave option is not hard but needs some extra work. As Carlos stated in his article, the following steps should work:
1. Back up your Philips SPD8005BM/17 drive firmware using Flash Utility for LiteOn Based Optical Drives v 2.1.0 (http://codeguys.rpc1.org/utilities.html).
2. Flash your Philips SPD8005BM/17 drive with Lite-On SSM-8515S GS08 firmware (ftp://ftp.ca.pl/pub/caM158N_M158i/M158i_firmware) by executing GS08fix.exe. Your Philips SPD8005BM/17 will become a Lite-On SSM-8515S drive. You do not need to reboot at this point.
3. Update your Philips SPD8005BM/17 (but the system would think it's a Lite-On) with Lite-On SSM-8515S GS09 firmware (http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/FIRMWARE/Lite-On/Lite-On-SSM-8515S-Firmware-S09.shtml) which can be obtained via Lite-On official website. The reason why we upgraded using the GS08fix first and then GS09 is because GS08fix does not check whether the target drive is Lite-On or not. If you use GS09 directly, it will refuse to upgrade by stating it is not a Lite-On product.
4. Now, reboot and use EEPROM Utility for LiteOn/Sony/BenQ Drives 3.7.2 (http://codeguys.rpc1.org/utilities.html) to back up your current EEPROM setting just for safety. Please note that your drive will not be working right now, but your goal is just to change the Master/Slave setting.
5. You can go ahead and use the EEPROM Utility to change the drive's Master/Slave setting. Please be sure about the right Master/Slave setting, because if you changed it to a wrong setting and caused your BIOS not able to recognize the drive, you will need to find a laptop that can accept your current Master/Slave setting and perform the setting change again.
6. You can flash your Philips SPD8005BM/17 back using the original firmware (the one you backed up in the first step) using Flash Utility for LiteOn Based Optical Drives v 2.1.0 (note: not the EEPROM flash, but firmware flash).
7. Reboot and the Master/Slave setting of your Philips drive is now set. Your drive should be working as a Philips SPD8005BM/17 again.

Please note that the Slim Master/Slave function of EEPROM Utility does not work under Windows Vista. You need to do this on a Windows XP system.

I have successfully changed the Master/Slave setting of my Philips SPD8005BM/17 by using the above step. If I studied a little more and bought a Lite-On drive instead, I could change the Master/Slave in a snap without all those hassles. I created two jumper setting EEPROM copies of Philips SPD8005BM/17 here (contains Master.bin and Slave.bin); in theory, you can just change the Philips SPD8005BM/17 drive setting by flashing either one of them using EEPROM Utility for LiteOn/Sony/BenQ Drives 3.7.2 (http://codeguys.rpc1.org/utilities.html). However, as ala42 pointed out that "The eeprom contains calibration data and is checksummed with a non writable part of the eeprom data, so your eeprom data will set every other drive out of function", so the files might be potential harmful. Please don't use the file unless you are willing to risk damaging your drive. The safest way is to create the files via the methods mentioned above.

Anyway, does my Philips SPD8005BM/17 (set as Master) work in my Toshiba Satellite R15 now?

NO

I still got this funny IDE #1 error.

Now, I searched again and found that many Toshiba optical drives uses Master inverted C-SEL. Unless you pay extra to get those special modified version or the expensive factory drives from Toshiba, you simply cannot upgrade the drives yourself.

Any ways to walk around? I searched again and found that I can achieve the similar effect by shorting the Pin 47 and Pin 45.

I did not want to solder my drive because I want the whole modification to be easily reversible. I used a piece of 1 mm x 1mm aluminum foil and a piece of 1 mm x 5 mm tape to do the job. I tape the foil on to short the two pins on the drive connect. Guess what, it works!!



Now I can use the Philips SPD8005BM/17 DVD-RW on Toshiba Satellite R15.