Keyboard inverters/converters for terminals

[Fred Cisin]

On Fri, 22 May 2020, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> Ha!
> I have an old external 3.5" IDE disk enclosure. It's a good enclosure,
> too -- Firewire 800 _and_ USB 2 _and_ eSATA. It has the internal drive
> from my old iMac G5 in it. The iMac suffered from failing capacitors
> and I coaxed a little more life from it by making its HD external.
> I wish to retrieve its contents.
> It has a very odd power connector. It's a DIN plug with quite a few
> pins -- 7 or 8 and a plastic locator. Unique PSU.
> As I have been on mandatory working-from-home for a couple of months,
> I took my Mac mini setup in the bedroom apart and stashed the bits
> away, and set up
> my work laptop with 2 old external screens as a home office. One
> ancient Eizo screen and a slightly more modern HDMI one.
>
> Snag: I failed to pack the modern HDMI screen's PSU brick away with it.
> This led to a lot of frantic hunting. I found the power brick, and some others.
>
> The snag is this. I now have _two_ power bricks for the external
> drive. Both deliver the requisite *both* 12V and 5V. Both have the
> right DIN plug and fit.
>
> But they're wired differently. One's ground pins are the other's 12V pins.
>
> I think this is now resolved but it was an interesting question: one
> brick will power the drive, while the other, with an identical
> connector, is more or less guaranteed to release the magic smoke from
> the external enclosure.


Similarly, I have a few 3.25" drives.  NO, not 3.5"; not 3.0".  3.25" was 
the entry in the "shirt pocket disk" wars that Dysan bet the company on. 
(remember their disks?)    Another discussion.
OB_Tangent: Georgre Morrow said that the solution would be to cut a deal 
with clothing manufacturers to make shirt pockets 5.25" or even 8"

3.0" drives (Amdek, Amstrad, etc.) use same connectors as "standard" 
5.25", with "molex" power connector (I don't know what the CORRECT name is 
for that connector).

But, I have some 3.25" drives that use same connectors as "standard" 3.5" 
drives, ("4 pin Berg"?)  EXCEPT 5V and 12V are swapped in their positions 
in the coneectors!