20 Mar
2000
20 Mar
'00
2:32 p.m.
I'm not certain I know which of the items on my list you're referring to ,
but I've learned that I have only five drives to deal with, so I'm not
worrying about making a board at this juncture. I've got to adapt from two
fairly standard connectors, i.e. 40-pin IDE and +12, 2x GND, +5, of which
the +12 isn't needed, to that 44-pin connector on the notebook drives.
The best arrangement I've seen is is a dual-row by 22 with short soldertails
sticking strainght out from the connector in such a way as to facilitate
soldering to a 2-sided PCB. That, at this point would work for me. I have
an adapter between the two connector types but that's just a mite too large
for my application, particularly since it restricts my ability to mount the
drive such that it's centered on the PCB, half protruding through the top of
the board and half through the bottom so as to avoid interference with the
adjacent cards.
So, John, did you find they were back-ordered on the ribbon cable? Since
I'm in no hurry, perhaps it doesn't make much difference. You're right
about the suitability of 50-conductor ribbon, though.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: John Wilson <wilson(a)dbit.dbit.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Monday, March 20, 2000 7:34 PM
Subject: Re: iOpener
On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 01:13:45PM -0700, Richard
Erlacher wrote:
> Do any of you fellows know of a ready/reasonable source of the
44-conductor
> connectors and cables used with notebook drives?
I believe the spacing
of
the connector
pins is 2mm.
Digikey sells it, but it seems they're backordered on the AMP brand for
about a week, all they have is the 3M equivalent which costs 5x as much.
I just changed my order to the 3M stuff and now I'm kicking myself because
I forgot to ask whether they had the AMP version in 50 conductors, I'd be
happy to unzip the last 6 conductors and save myself $30!!! Geez.
John Wilson
D Bit 
20 Mar
20 Mar
4:49 p.m.
On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 09:32:14PM -0700, Richard Erlacher wrote:
So, John, did you find they were back-ordered on the
ribbon cable? Since
I'm in no hurry, perhaps it doesn't make much difference. You're right
about the suitability of 50-conductor ribbon, though.
Guh! I'm sorry, yes the ribbon cable was what I meant. Digikey is out
of the AM44G-x-ND cable (which was 10' for $5.68), but they do have the
MC44L-x-ND (which is 5m for $34.58!!! definitely worth waiting the week if
you can stand it). The AMP 50-conductor cable would be AM50G-x-ND (where
x is length in feet, 5/10/25/50/100/500), but when I called back to try to
change, my order had already gone out, so I didn't press them to find out
whether it's in stock. Since it requires a human to cut it to order, the
web site automatically lists it as back-ordered whether it's in stock or
not.
They have the 44-pin IDC connectors too. The AMP is ASA44K-ND for $3.54,
the 3M is MSA44A-ND for $4.47. Hard to tell from the sketches, but the
3Ms look to be smaller, which would be a good thing since the iOpener is
so cramped inside.
I deleted an earlier post before its Deep Inner Beauty sunk in, who was
it that suggested switching the conductors by simply using two separate
ribbon cables with a straight-through header between them? I like it!
(Trying to figure out whether it would work makes my head hurt, but I think
you're right.) Looks like a regular through-hole PCB header might even work,
the solder tail end is only 0.85 mm shorter than the business end, according
to the sketches in the Digikey catalog.
Really stupid question: there's no BIOS support yet to make USB devices
bootable, is there? Using a USB Zip as the system disk would sure save
some trouble here, if only they weren't such a pain to program...
John Wilson
D Bit
21 Mar
21 Mar
2:02 a.m.
On Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 01:49:50AM -0500, I wrote:
I deleted an earlier post before its Deep Inner Beauty
sunk in, who was
it that suggested switching the conductors by simply using two separate
ribbon cables with a straight-through header between them? I like it!
It was Fred Cisin -- good thinking Fred!!! This is *much* simpler than what
I was going to do, and it sure beats doing individual wires. I accidentally
swapped layers on an ISA PCB once, and tried to get it running anyway by
hanging a huge hank of wire wrap wire off of an extender board and soldering
it to the edge fingers on the bad PCB, it took forever and evidently I messed
up at least a wire or two because I never did get the darn thing working, had
to get a fresh PCB made instead in a hurry at great expense (fortunately my
boss was a good sport about it). This is almost as many conductors...
John Wilson
D Bit
3:51 a.m.
John Wilson <wilson(a)dbit.dbit.com> wrote:
I deleted an earlier post before its Deep Inner Beauty sunk in, who was
it that suggested switching the conductors by simply using two separate
ribbon cables with a straight-through header between them? I like it!
(Trying to figure out whether it would work makes my head hurt, but I think
you're right.) Looks like a regular through-hole PCB header might even work,
the solder tail end is only 0.85 mm shorter than the business end, according
to the sketches in the Digikey catalog.
Hi
I thought I might add that the simple pin headers that
come on the black strips can be used. Even though these
come with unbalanced pin hights, one can simply push the
pin through the plastic until they are balanced. The
pins are straight through.
I once made several foot extention this way. I found the
line flipping and realized that I needed three pieces
( or any odd number ) to keep the signals straight.
On a seperate subject, these iopeners, when you buy
them, is there some kind of isp obligation or do you
just get the machine for $99 with no strings?
Dwight
9043
days inactive
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days old
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