Replacing Cube Optical Drive

[Fiveos22]

I've noticed quite a bit of discussion on other Cube forums about installing a Pioneer K05 drive as a replacement or upgrade to a faulty OEM drive. Due to the slow and imminent death of my MacBook, I've been considering removing the optical drive from this MacBook and re-mounting it in a Cube.

Aside from the obvious disparity in the physical sizes of the drives, there is a large difference in cables and connections that I need some help with - does anyone have any experience in this area?

 

[Fiveos22]

Drive installation update

Hate to bump my own post, but perhaps an image of my current problem will help. I successfully installed the optical drive last night and, after resetting the jumpers on the HDD to slave, was able to use it to play and burn DVDs.

The problem is that in its current configuration, with the new drive correctly joined to the old circuitry, this whole assembly does not fit back into the case (link goes to picture of the assembly).

Ideally, I'm looking for a 6" slim ATAPI to slim ATAPI cable so I can just turn the drive over to slide it into place, but I have yet to find one. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to fix this?

 

[California]

I used to think about doing this.

Can't you take the old optical drive apart and somehow use the ata plug on it on the newer drive?

Your newer drive is also ata ide, right?

Google around. I remember someone did this once and posted pics.

I think someone modded out the old components from the old optical drive to use in the smaller newer ones.

Doesn't OWC still sell Cube modded optical drives?

 

[Fiveos22]

Yes, the plugs on both the new drive and the old wires are slim ATAPI, but because of their opposing orientations, they cannot be connected like the original drive (ie in such a way that they fit back into the original case).

OWC still sells one or two drives that work with the Cube requiring no modifications, however this particular drive was essentially free.