Here is our step by step guide to upgrading your Wersi
Abacus with a new DVD RW drive and Media bay. We did our
homework to see which bay was best value for money and
would fit with little modification and the drive we have
opted for is a drive manufactured by Logilink. All parts
carried out to do this modification are available from a
supplier in Stoke on Trent who will ship nationally. The
DVD RW drive is manuactured by Samsung and comes complete
with 2 different facias for the front, one cream, one
black.
Changing the facia is simple, just unclip and you are away.
Here is how we did the modification:
Opening your Wersi Abacus Duo Deluxe ready to change the CD
Drive.
Remove the old CD drive by unclipping the connectors
at the back of the CD Drive. Make sure that on the new
drive you are installing you set the small plastic jumper
setting to match that of your old drive. There are 3 sets
of pins - left, middle and right. Make sure the plastic
clip is set to the left hand
side pair. You are now ok to connect your new drive and
re-attach to the cabinet using the 4 screws directly
underneath
When connecting the cables to the new DVD drive, be
very careful not to bend or damage any of the pins on the
back of the new Drive. They are fragile and if you line one
of the pins up at an angle, you can damage the new drive -
We did warn you.
Here is the rear of the new DVD drive which we
inserted - identical to the drive we removed. Make sure the
drive is an IDE drive. The cost of the new drive was just
£18
Whilst we had our beloved Abacus open, we removed the
floppy disc drive and replaced it with a new all singing
all dancing media bay - no more plugging USB dongles in the
back - now we can insert any media type into the front of
the organ. We chose the Logilink drive as the length of the
cable was perfect to reach the motherboard and the best
part was that the drive cost just £6!
Here is the cost breakdown of our upgrade.
2 x 1gig memory upgrade £60
1 x DVD RW drive £18
1 x Media Bay £6
Total cost of upgrade £84
