Is anyone familiar with the 50-pin IDE interface, which I think is called ATA-3? It is from around 1997-2002. Normally IDE is 40-pin, or in laptops might be a 44-pin.
But in a COMPAQ Presario 1220, I've come across its hard drive that is using this 50-pin interface (two rows of 25-pin that are quite small/tightly spaced - moreso than even PCMCIA). I believe it is different (electrically) than the 1.8" 50-pin interface. I ordered a CF-to-50-pin adapter that is intended for those 1.8" drives, and it won't work on this ATA-2 port (system won't boot with it inserted). However, all my CF cards are larger than 2GB - so I'm not sure if that was the issue (don't think so, I think even with 8GB or larger it would still at least try to boot). The 2GB drive in this Presario (with the "weird' 50-pin IDE) contains Windows ME and Office 2000. That's cute, but I'm not so interested in that - I was hoping to image that drive for archive, then install something else (OS2). But I can't find any "ATA-3 to normal 40-pin IDE" adapter. I think the "6 extra pins" on this 50-pin (relative to normal 44-pin laptop drives of those days) -- 2 of those pins (5-6) aren't used (maybe a kind of key) and the 4 others (1-4) are vendor specific. So I may just be out of luck here in upgrading or replacing this drive with a more modern solution. But wanted to run it by the crew here before giving up. Thanks, -Steve / v*
