Laptop / 3.5" drive question

[jim_daniels]

Ok, heres the deal:
I'm building a desktop mini-cab/jukebox out of an old IBM laptop I got for free, which works fine, except it doesn't have a hard drive.  Laptop drives tend to get really expensive as you get bigger, plus, I have quite a few 3.5" ide drives laying around big enough to hold mame and all the roms and have enough left over for some mp3s.  
My question is, is there any way to connect one of these drives to a laptop?  It appears the connection is like a minature 40 pin IDE (not sure if the pins are the same, anyone know?) then to the side of it, a couple of extra pins for power.  
Has anyone successfully adapted anything like this before? Anyone?

[Mike]

I know they make an adapter to go from laptop drive to regular ide. But I've never seen anything that worked in reverse. You might want to look into just buying a laptop drive they aren't as expensive as they used to be. 20GB for $99 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=426469 Any adapter would probably run you $40 anyways.

[hyiu]

$99 for 20G is not a bad deal for laptop....
but you can get 100G for $104 (S&H included !!)

so... there is still quite some price difference...

[MinerAl]

According to this:

http://www.computerrepairservice.com/cables/menu_Connector.html

ATA is the 40 pin standard on 3.5" HDs

ATA(44) is what 2.5" HDs use.

Pins 1 through 40 of ATA(44) are the same as ATA's 40 pins, plus 4 extra pins (41-44) for power, instead of a seperate power connector.

Seems like a fairly simple adaptation,  but I'm glad you're doing it and not me

Good luck!

[Silverwind]

According to this:

http://www.computerrepairservice.com/cables/menu_Connector.html

ATA is the 40 pin standard on 3.5" HDs

ATA(44) is what 2.5" HDs use.

Pins 1 through 40 of ATA(44) are the same as ATA's 40 pins, plus 4 extra pins (41-44) for power, instead of a seperate power connector.

Seems like a fairly simple adaptation,  but I'm glad you're doing it and not me

Good luck!

hehe.. yeah.. do you have a spare PC hard drive laying around to test it on?

[eightbit]

Look around for iopener internet pc hacks. They were supposed to run without hard drives. But people were hacking them to make them mine flat screen PC's. They had a laptop plug on them but a lot of people were adapting them for use with regular IDE drives and a bunch of places sold a convertor to do it. Its really just as simple as finding the pins that get power and routing them appropriately. Those things have mostly dried up but occasionaly you can still find them and there are still websites selling the conversion kits and parts.

[jim_daniels]

I think it seems like a fairly simple adaptation too, and hell I even got a couple of 500mb drives I'd risk blowing to test it out.  But my biggest obstacle is the actual adapter.  Laptops don't use cables (as far as I know) the hard drives just plug into the port on the laptop.  So where do you get the an ata44 adapter/cable to splice??

[MinerAl]

Another option might be a PC Card USB and an external enclosure.  The extra cost would probably make it easier to just buy a 2.5" though.

Could you solder or crimp 40 pins on the ends of the 40 wires in the ribbon cable,  then 4 more for the power adapter?  You'd have to carefully put each pin in each hole, but it could be done.

You might want to rip open some junkyard laptops... some of the ones I've dug into did have ribbon cables that you might canabalize to help.

[eightbit]

Opposite of what you need but this should be easy enough to hack. on the big drive side plug in a ide cable on the laptop side you'll have to get creative or find a gender bender.
http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=906&sku=17705