Seagate Microdrive ATA Flex Adapter? Repair?

[Zero Cool]

Anyone here know of an adapter that will allow an Microdrive with the ATA Flex cable interface to be plugged into a standard IDE port??

I have a CF Card adapter But i cannot find a flex drive adapter.

Does anyone work for seagate? I have 6 drives that need to be tested/formatted.



ZC

 

[karma]

http://www.psism.com/adcf.htm

http://forum.ncix.com/forums/index....did=1097474&pagenumber=1&msgcount=7&subpage=1

some Compact Flash adapters work with microdrives

 

[Zero Cool]

Right but the drives i have do not have the plug in interface like a standard CF drive. these drives have the ATA Flex cable interface. see the drive in the photo


Zc

 

[karma]

ok now i see it. weird most of the mp3 players i work on dont have the flex cable. not really sure what to use

i think some of the old rio's had flex cables if i remember right and ipod.

you can test the hd on a first gen and sec gen ipod.

 

[ido8bit]

Do you have the pinout for the Flex ATA interface? As fiddly as it would be it may be easier to just make an adapter rather than track one down?

Are these drives available on their own? If the price is reasonable one may be useful (though overkill) for a project of mine.

 

[Zero Cool]

These drives are a bugger to get! I managed to find a source for them new but my cost on them is $75.00us each. and i can buy the MP3 players they are used in refurbished on ebay for $100us each so there isnt much of a bargain here.

BUT, many of these MP3 players break. and it is looking like harddrive errors every time. If i can find a way to reformat and test the drives. i may be able to rebuild these units much cheaper.

My understanding from doing many web searches is that this interface is just a ATA 100 standard IDE interface. so it SHOULD be realitivly easy to build a PCB adapter if i can locate the pinouts. I have searched Seagates website and cannot find any detailed information as is with most of there drives. I will place a call to them and see what i can figure out.

Then i need to figure out what the ZIF connector they use is and find someone to build the boards for me.

.....Step 1




Zc

 

[eddyspaghetti]

FlexIDE Microdrive Pinouts

I realize this thread is pretty old, but due to the huge void of info on these lil buggers I'll throw up what I know about them as of yet.

Pin Signal Description
1 Ground Ground
2 DD11 Data bus bit 11
3 DD10 Data bus bit 10
4 DD8 Data bus bit 8
5 RESET- Reset
6 DD14 Data bus bit
7 DD15 Data bus bit
8 IORDY- I/O ReadyDMA ready during Ultra DMA data-in burstsData strobe during Ultra DMA data-out bursts
9 INTRQ Interrupt request
10 DA1 Device address bit 1
11 GROUND Ground
12 DA2 Device address bit 2
13 DA0 Device address bit 0
14 DIOW- I/O WriteStop during Ultra DMA data bursts
15 GROUND Ground
16 DIOR- I/O ReadDMA ready during Ultra DMA data-in burstsData strobe during Ultra DMA data-out bursts
17 GROUND Ground
18 PDIAG- Passed diagnostics
19 GROUND Ground
20 DASP- Device active or slave present
21 GROUND Ground
22 CS1- Chip select 0
23 GROUND Ground
24 DD9 Data bus bit 9
25 GROUND Ground
26 DD13 Data bus bit 13
27 CSEL Cable select
28 DD12 Data bus bit 12
29 DD7 Data bus bit 7
30 DD6 Data bus bit 6
31 DD5 Data bus bit 5
32 DD4 Data bus bit 4
33 DD3 Data bus bit 3
34 DD2 Data bus bit 2
35 GROUND Ground
36 DD1 Data bus bit 1
37 DD0 Data bus bit 0
38 DMARQ DMA request
39 DMACK- DMA Acknowledge
40 IOCS16- Data transfer size is one word per transfer cycle
41 CS0 Chip select 0
42 Reserved 1 Reserved for device use only
43 Reserved 2 Reserved for device use only
44 VCC +3.3V 3.3V Voltage supply to device
45 VCC +3.3V 3.3V Voltage supply to device
<br>That's the pinout of the FlexIDE Cable on a Seagate, which I'm rather certain is standard pinout on all such drives.