New subject: OT: Re: iOpener

20 Mar 2000

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.  I need a limited about of this stuff and a few
of the IDC connectors to be used at each end of the cable.  The adapter I
have for this drive type has a typical HD power connector on it along with
an inline pc-mount connector that would also be of interest.

Any suggestions?

Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: John Wilson &lt;wilson(a)dbit.dbit.com&gt;
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt;
Date: Monday, March 20, 2000 12:19 PM
Subject: Re: iOpener

...
 On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 09:13:56AM -0800, Ethan Dicks
wrote:
  There's great hack running around where you
take a regular 44-pin cable
 that's long enough and attach a second connector immediately adjacent to
 the connector on one end.  You use the inner pins of the end connector
 and the outer pins on the new connector to attach to the motherboard.

      -------------------
      ||               ||||
                        ^^  (use these "pins")
   drive end      motherboard end 
Cute!  Well that sure beats slicing the cable up into 22 pairs and trying to
...
 get them stay down in the "twisted" position
while you put on a connector.

                         ||
     --------------------
     ||

 Wouldn't that simulate having a connector on the wrong side and reverse
 the effect of the motherboard wiring? 
Unfortunately not, IDC connectors don't work that way.  You'll just tap the
same wires in different places, it's as if you took a regular cable and just
...
 folded one end over, nothing has changed.  I remember
confusing the hell out
...
 of myself with this the first time I tried to get a
DZ11A cab kit working...
...

> AFAIK, there is no ready source of 12V.  Also, consider the power draw. A
...
 > laptop drive pulls 500-700mA (2,5-3.5W), a desktop
drive draws closer to
> 9W-15W.  It's even a consideration when choosing a different
> CPU (ISTR the WinChip180 is rated at ~9W, most Pentia suck around 13-17W).
...

Yeah actually I was wondering if the laptop drive is already pushing things.
...
 The power supply is really tiny (integrated on the main
board) and it's
powered by a puny wall wart transformer, the label says 81VA but even that's
...
 hard to imagine given how light it is.

  ObClassic: there's plenty of space on the
flash disk to stick a small OS
 and a variety of apps including Kermit. 
I was thinking, making a PCMCIA flash card adapter for the 44-pin cable
wouldn't be hard at all, that might be another easy way to get stuff in
and out.

> If you hacked the flash and disabled
> the hard disk (or had a way to specify the boot order), you could bring it
...
 > up by default into a terminal program and use it
as a console if it weren't
...
 > running some other app.  Yes, a dumb terminal is
cheaper and probably more
...
 > VT100 compliant (double-high characters spring to
mind immediately), but a
...
   real DEC
terminal is not as portable. 
Yeah I *wish* someone was making ASCII terminals like this box, it's perfect
...
 for one, at least part time.  But the box has too much
potential to actually
...
 *dedicate* your only one as being just a small/light
VT100 replacement, which
...
 is sort of a shame.

But I figure, even if the Netpliance folks close the loophole (which seems
inevitable given all the press it's gotten) and we can't buy these boxes
for
...
 $99.95 for much longer, the regular users will get
tired of them eventually
and there will be piles of them on eBay in a year or two, probably for even
less than the $99.95.  *That* will be the perfect time to put one on every
flat surface in the whole house!  Meanwhile, gotta get an order out to Digikey.
...

John Wilson
D Bit 