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Unlike some people who have issues with the video or WiFi drivers, I suffer from not being able to use the DVD drive on this laptop. Upon POST, the BIOS sees it and I am able to open the tray as well; however, once the system starts to load up Ubuntu or other distros (Debian and Linux Mint), I lose all functionality. Plus, I don't see it listed as a device in the OS. I've poured over the internet the past few days trying to see if anyone else has the issue, or did and found a solution but sadly, nothing anywhere so far. So, I thought I would ask the community here and see what you all think. Worse case scenario, I have some dead weight to a nice little machine. Thanks!

PS I honestly think Linux doesn't like the IDE interface the disc drive has.

2 Answers 2

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Sadly, this is apparently a known problem from long ago. The author of this article suggests that you best bet is to get an external USB drive. There was some support at Dell for a version of RedHat, but these are so old they will be useless.

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  • The thing linked on the Dell website is a firmware updater, not a driver. Did you try updating to the latest of your DVD drives firmware?
    – ntninja
    Jun 10, 2014 at 16:36
  • I'll give the firmware a go. I'll report back on if it worked or not. Thanks for the quick replies , much appreciated.
    – DragonFire
    Jun 11, 2014 at 3:35
  • @alexander255 The firmware update worked like a charm, thanks for the suggestion. For everyone else, I had the TSST-TS-L632H-SLIM-8X-DVD drive and I used this firmware for it: dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/… and used the DOS based updater on a bootable DOS USB stick. Took 5 seconds.
    – DragonFire
    Jun 11, 2014 at 6:52
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Alright, so the suggestion alexander255 gave worked. I had the TSST-TS-L632H-SLIM-8X-DVD drive on my D830 which I have the firmware update linked here:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=R250068&fileId=2731128725&osCode=WLH&productCode=latitude-d830&languageCode=EN&categoryId=RS

I used the DOS based updater with my bootable DOS USB drive and it was quick and painless. Thanks again for the help, now I have an old Dell D830 working at 100% on Linux. Off to work on the D810 I just got...

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