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Toshiba Tecra 500CDT does not detect CD-ROM drive

3lectr1c

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Joined
Nov 28, 2022
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I have a problematic Tecra that fails to detect its CD-ROM drive. It does not show up as a drive letter in Windows. I can't boot from it either, but I believe these Toshibas just don't support that.
Drive itself is known-good and works perfectly in my Satellite Pro 430CDT.
I did see the access light come on once while it was passing post, but it doesn't do this every time.

I tried a Windows reinstall thinking it was that, but it wasn't.

Any ideas? BIOS battery is dead and removed, so settings should be at their defaults. Nothing obvious related to the CD-ROM in the BIOS.
 
Perhaps a flaky connector on the motherboard? Are these bay drives or do you have to take the machine apart to remove them? If so, there could be a matter of cold solder joints.
 
It’s a modular bay. I could take it apart to check for anything obvious but this thing is so brittle I’d worry about it falling apart, lol.
 
Some of these just fall apart no matter what. There are several stress cracks all around the laptop's body that have just formed themselves, I worry if I took it apart at all I'd have chunks falling off. This thing is my only laptop that is genuinely going to fall apart in the next few years. Shame, it's a really nice system.
 
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