I changed my dvdrom drive and replaced it with a dvd-rw drive that I got from an old toshiba laptop. The problem is that it wont boot from the dvd drive.. bios wont recognize it. But when I put back the old one, I can boot from the dvdrom drive. I noticed that if Im using the old one, it uses location 0 (from device manager) but if I use the new one, it uses location 1. Could that be the problem?
That definitely could be the problem. My guess is that it has to do with the Master or Slave setting of the drive (given that the drive is IDE, I do believe there is still a master/slave setting), but bigger problem is how to change it since most drives don't have jumpers, might need to flash the firmware of the dvd-rw drive to make it work. But, like I said, this is just speculation on my part.
I know I'm getting into this late but I still buy and refurbish these laptops for desktop replacement for older people like me!
It definitely is a master slave problem since the laptop has two IDE buses like the desktops have so the DVD drive has to be set to master for it to boot. The laptop drives don't generally come with a jumper but most often have a solder bridge just inside the rear cover for making the selection.
As an aside, I've been able to take DVD+&-R/W drives from HP dv2000s and use them in these models as an upgrade without any changes except for the mounting tab on the rear. The bezel doesn't fit quite right and I haven't found a way to change it to the old one but it does work just fine!