Is anyone familiar with the 50-pin IDE interface, which I think is called
ATA-3? It is from around 1997-2002. Normally IDE is 40-pin, or in
laptops might be a 44-pin.
But in a COMPAQ Presario 1220, I've come across its hard drive that is
using this 50-pin interface (two rows of 25-pin that are quite
small/tightly spaced - moreso than even PCMCIA).
I believe it is different (electrically) than the 1.8" 50-pin interface. I
ordered a CF-to-50-pin adapter that is intended for those 1.8" drives, and
it won't work on this ATA-2 port (system won't boot with it inserted).
However, all my CF cards are larger than 2GB - so I'm not sure if that was
the issue (don't think so, I think even with 8GB or larger it would still
at least try to boot).
The 2GB drive in this Presario (with the "weird' 50-pin IDE) contains
Windows ME and Office 2000. That's cute, but I'm not so interested in that
- I was hoping to image that drive for archive, then install something else
(OS2). But I can't find any "ATA-3 to normal 40-pin IDE" adapter.
I think the "6 extra pins" on this 50-pin (relative to normal 44-pin laptop
drives of those days) -- 2 of those pins (5-6) aren't used (maybe a kind of
key) and the 4 others (1-4) are vendor specific. So I may just be out of
luck here in upgrading or replacing this drive with a more modern
solution. But wanted to run it by the crew here before giving up.
Thanks,
-Steve / v*