Ultrabay

IBM Ultrabay Ultrabay is IBM's name for the swapable drive slot. With IBMs words: "The ThinkPad Ultrabay, also standard with the system, is an intelligent bay that switches its pinout signals to allow the installation of standard and optional features in what would normally be just the FDD bay." Introduced back in the times of the 770 ThinkPads, this technology has gone through redesigns with almost every new generation of Thinkpad models, possibly leading to some confusion that is hopefully cleared up here. The following table gives an overview of the different Ultrabay types, in which models they occurred and what drives are available for them. Note that the optical drive bay in G series ThinkPads is not an Ultrabay in that the drives are fixed and not removable. On the media side different UltraBays relate to the form factor of the drives they accept, e.g early A, T and X series models can accept UltraBay devices up to 12.5mm in thickness, whereas current T and X series machines are limited to devices no more than 9.5mm thick.

Overview over UltraBay types and available devices

UltraBay Type	featured in	available drives (see UltraBay Devices for details)
Ultrabay	760C, 760CD, 760E, 760ED, 760EL, 760ELD, 760LD, 760XD, 760XL, 765D, 765L	1 , 2.88 MB diskette, PCMCIA Cartridge, IBM Wireless Modem ARDIS, IBM Wireless Modem
Ultrabay II	770, 770E, 770ED, 770X, 770Z, SelectaDock III
Ultrabay FX	390, 390E, 390X, i Series 1720, i Series 1721
Ultraslimbay	600, 600E, 600X, UltraBase
Ultrabay 2000	A20m, A20p, A21e, A21m, A21p, A22e, A22m, A22p, A30, T20, T21, T22, T23, Dock, Dock II, UltraBase X2
Ultrabay Plus	A30, A30p, A31, A31p, R30, R31, R32, R40, T23, T30, UltraBase X3	, WorkPad Cradle, Numpad
Ultrabay Slim	T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p, T43, T43p, Z60t UltraBase X4, ThinkPad X4 Dock
Ultrabay Enhanced	R50, R50p, R51, R52, Z60m
Advanced Ultrabay	Z60m, Z60t

Compatibility Matrix (read columns as slots with rows as devices that are compatible)

Slots Devices	Ultrabay	Ultrabay II	Ultrabay FX	Ultraslimbay	Ultrabay 2000	Ultrabay Plus	Ultrabay Slim	Ultrabay Enhanced	Advanced Ultrabay
Ultrabay	yes	Adapter	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Ultrabay II	-	yes	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Ultrabay FX	-	-	yes	-	-	-	-	-	-
Ultraslimbay	-	-	-	yes	-	-	-	-	-
Ultrabay 2000	-	-	-	-	yes	yes	-	-	??
Ultrabay Plus	-	-	-	-	-	yes	-	-	??
Ultrabay Slim	-	-	-	-	Adapter	Adapter	yes	yes	??
Ultrabay Enhanced	-	-	-	-	Adapter	Adapter	-	yes	??
Advanced Ultrabay	-	-	-	-	??	??	??	??	yes

Characteristics

• Ultrabay: no hot swapping
• Ultrabay II: supports hot swapping, blending has cut out egde on the right
• Ultrabay FX: the combined floppy drive and CD-ROM, DVD or CDRW mechanism found in the 390/390E/390X
• Ultraslimbay: supports hot swapping; Frame, rectangle like blending
• Ultrabay 2000: supports hot swapping; Frame, blending has cut out egde on the right
• Ultrabay Plus: same as UltraBay 2000, but can take the Ultrabay Plus Device Carrier which in turn can hold the Ultrabay Plus WorkPad Cradle or the Ultrabay Plus Numeric Keypad
• Ultrabay Slim: supports hot swapping; notably thinner than Ultrabay 2000, cut out right edge in blending
• Ultrabay Enhanced: supports hot swapping; slightly thicker than Ultrabay Slim, but accepts Ultrabay Slim devices

Linux Support

The pinout switching is done by the BIOS and hardware, so that it is completely transparent to the operating system.

• Floppy drives are supported by the standard floppy driver.
• ZIP drive support is possible through the ide-disk driver.
• IDE drives are supported by the IDE driver in the linux kernel. SCSI emulation via ide-scsi is possible. *Batteries are BIOS controlled, anyway.
• UltraBay Plus devices should be handled by the USB subsystem, but if the devices are is not known.

Hotswapping is supposed to be supported as well, using hdparm to (un)register devices. This seems to be broken with 2.6 kernels.

External Sources

• IBMs page on using a second hard drive adapter in the Ultrabay 2000 slot under Linux

FOOTNOTES [Δ]

1. CD-ROM not supported in 760C, 760CD, 760L, 760LD