Need help gutting Zip drive from G4 450 (Sawtooth)

L

Lazarus18

In debt medical student
So I've made a rather interesting discovery. I bought a Sony Spressa 100E USB CD-RW back in os 9.0 days. In OS X it is a paperweight. So out of frustration (and curiosity) I ripped it apart. Inside the housing sits a Sony Spressa 120E drive. I unplugged my never used Zip drive and lo and behold OS X recognizes the drive, and as I write this iTunes is burning a playlist.

So this is a good thing, but the way it sits now the drive is kind of hanging from the ata cable that the Zip used and is powered by the old housing which is sitting next to the computer. Splitting a power supply off to it is no problem, but clearly I need to come up with a way to make this fit and work with the computer CLOSED. The Zip drive sits below my DVD-ROM, but the housing for that is too small to fit the 5.25" CDRW. Is there any way to replace the housing or something to have this sit beneath my DVD-ROM? Also I'm not sure what to do about having access to the front. I guess it will have to sit there beige and boring, which is fine, but getting it to have a home in there is the tricky part. Any bright ideas?
 
Have you tried pulling out the entire housing of the zip drive, then sliding the CDRW on the shelf?
As for the front panel, I do believe that you can get a new CD panel for it from Apple. If not them, then MacMall.
 
There's no housing on the zip drive is all one piece with the housing above it for the DVD drive, Cheryl. The enclosure will only fit in a 3.5" drive/device.

I've wanted to do this same thing myself, so I'm going to be taking a dremel to mine and cut some of the side parts off so that my CD burner will fit in there. Will also have to take off some of the chasis where the drive sticks out. Then will have to figure out some way to get it all to stay in place, since I'll be taking off the part where the screws go in.
 
Keep me posted on your progress. You'll probably have to dig up this thread as it sounds like that project may take you awhile.

I ended up replacing my DVD-ROM with the Spressa CD-RW (it's still very odd to me that the unit works perfectly as an internal drive but won't be recognized as a USB drive). I decided that as often as I've watched a DVD on my desktop (about once) it's really not too big a loss. That's what I have my Powerbook for, right? But as I NEVER use the Zip drive if you find a decent way to hack this together I'd be interested. Good luck!
 
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