Re: Grid 1537 ”Tempest” schematics

[Curt Vendel]

Nope - definitely IDE, had an IDE drive in it and someone just either 
didn't have the sled/tray anymore or just decided to do something on 
their own.  Either way, I have several of the lines from the cable that 
are off the through holes for the IDE interface. I've taken photo's, 
made a drawing of the pinouts on the motherboard and now I'm writing 
down what each of the through holes are going to on the IDE cable and 
then will work through the process of elimination and tracing (which is 
not easy as the motherboard has an RF grid pattern solder layer on the 
bottom of the motherboard (board is 4 layer) but some time and patience 
with a multimeter and I should be able to figure out where all of the 
detached lines need to go to, there are only 5 so hopefully it won't be 
too much work.   Still trying to figure out which chip is managing the 
IDE, I found which manages the Floppy.

Yes, the 12v actually has a power connector line run to it for the HD 
power, along with the 5v and GND's...  I need to redo those as well, 
they way they were done is not very safe.

Once smart thing the person did was run the CMOS battery lines up 
through the media housing and used 2 AA battery holders to substitute 
for the CMOS battery and they tuck in very nicely nice to the storage 
shielding so you only have to undo the 2 back screws and life the back 
top section of cover off, versus complete taking the entire unit apart 
to get to the CMOS battery location on the motherboard.

Its a very modular design, everything detaches separately, just the 
massive amount of shielding around everything makes taking it all apart 
quite the task.   This'll probably be one of the only pieces of 
technology still working if an EMP bomb is ever detonated over the US ;-)



On 8/15/2019 2:51 AM, Ian Finder wrote:
> I was under the impression that the internal hard drive on the 1537 is 
> SCSI and not IDE.
> Careful, some of those pins have +12 power for the drive on them as well.
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 8:49 PM Curt Vendel via cctalk 
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>       I’m doing some work for a friend who has one of these unicorns
>     it’s apparently a super beefed up CIA use the laptop that wound up
>     in Russia somehow and he got it shipped back here to the US
>
>     The motherboard was modified it looks like the hard drive was on
>     some kind of a tray going to a connector which is IDE compatible
>
>     Someone had extremely poorly soldered on an IDE cable in place of
>     the sled and over the years several of the pans of popped off and
>     they’re not really making sense as to the solder points they’re
>     supposed to go to.  Complicating the matter is the paint outs are
>     not just a direct staggered 40 Pin to Pin connection several of
>     the through holes are not in use so just soldering on I had her
>     and plug in the cable into it is not possible also the pens are
>     staggered so that wouldn’t make it possible either.
>
>     So to cut to the chase does anyone have the schematics or the
>     motherboard pinouts for this connector so that I can do a proper
>     soldering job and put on a clean working cable so that this laptop
>     can vote from the IDE hard drive?
>



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