26 Mar
2023
26 Mar
'23
2:26 p.m.
On Sun, Mar 26, 2023 at 10:20 PM Paul Berger via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have seen lots of laptop drives that would fit a 50
pin connector that
is about 2mm pitch Looking at the back of the drive from the left there
are 44 pins in a group then 2 pins missing and the remaining 4 are for
selecting master and slave.
https://www.unitechelectronics.com/ide44pinout.gif which shows 44 pins +
the '6' extra slots
for cable select and keying. These are often called the '44 pin'
interface...
Warner
Paul.
On 2023-03-26 4:33 p.m., Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
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*