IDE Hard Drive Question

[jim stephens]

On 6/25/2020 11:20 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctech wrote:
> On 6/25/20 4:12 PM, Jon Elson via cctech wrote:
>> On 06/25/2020 05:29 PM, W2HX via cctech wrote:
>>> Does ANYONE have any idea what these 4 wires are connected to and why?
>>> And anyone give any odds about whether these 4 wires will prevent this
>>> IDE-SD converter from working?
>>>
>>>
>> Temperature sensor and heater.  Undoubtedly for start-up in extreme cold
>> conditions.
> Certainly looks like that to me also.  Sits right atop the spindle motor.
>
> --Chuck
>
The drive spec I found for the Conner cfs540a (this drive) shows an 
operating range of 5c to 55c.

The top of the range is useful for mil operations, but the 5c spec would 
be bad if you ran the drive.

Full military just a casual google says is -55c, and extended industrial 
is -40c on the bottom.  We
did -40 specs for some of our projects, but nothing mechanical. The are 
at -40c to 60c for nonoperating,
so would be close to the low range if they could heat the spindle, and 
let the drive heat itself up.

One issue might be that the sensor will heat up this dongle and allow 
the thing to run, but there may
be a provision to spin the drive before it is expected to run.  A heat 
up or warmup feature might
be performed besides what Jon suggested with the heater / sensor.

I suspect this thing has to heat up and be at temp before something in 
the bios or otherwise allows
the drive to run.

The OP might look around and see if there are any of the heater strips 
around as well, to allow
heating in the drive box as needed.

I may have one of these systems with some extra drives, and the good 
news is they guy I bought them
from if mine are the same or of similar spec, is that he was putting 
drives in the boxes from random
drive buys and they were easy to run.  He didn't recall the spindle 
dongle on his drive pods though.

I'm waiting to hear for sure if the fellow I bought mine from remembers 
the manufacturer.  The system
and an auxiliary box of similar size with more pods came in a deal I 
couldn't pass up.  My box has
got a 486 motherboard and functional 10baseT card running in it.  I plan 
to use one of the pods
to do one of these as solid state to save runtime on the physical disks.


spec I used at:
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/techsuppt/seagate_utils/allconnr.pdf