In a nutshell: Ken Shirriff is an IC reverse engineering enthusiast who enjoys restoring vintage computers and devices. While repairing an 8-inch HP floppy drive, the computer historian discovered an ...

An external disc connected to a laptop. - Nor Gal/Shutterstock If you were to buy a new laptop, you'd have a hard time finding one with a built-in disc drive that can read CDs, DVDs, or Blu-ray discs.

The controller also might not take kindly to having a non-HP disk to deal with. If you got an HP SATA drive meant for that role, I'm sure it would work.<br><br>I suppose you could try flashing a ...