paperovyy.site
Published: 9 Nov. 2024
This post uses the date before this site was created.
So, today is a great day. I finally figured out the pinout on the HDD cable on that notebook.
It’s a Mini IDE to proprietary connector flex cable for Fujitsu FMV. Part’s full name is CA25256-L542 and CA20256-B54X.
Used ones still exist on Aliexpress, but it's too pricey for a single piece, even such rare, so I decided to make own direct connection instead of these janky flex-cables.
For your interest, I am not into really saving that Fujitsu notebook intact (including keeping it with original parts), but rather make it work. I'd rather buy that flex-cable for more reliable device, like ThinkPad. By the way, this one indeed uses ThinkPad's 17mm connector for an external floppy and it was backtraced the same way, but on my part I have no replacement for male connector head. Or do I need a replacement?
Before I continue, more about floppy & other connectors. I've tried inserting some random thin floppy drive that I bought as USB Drive, but sadly it didn't work. I still have the exact model number of original INTERNAL floppy drive, but it costs just like the whole notebook itself, so I'll postpone it temporarily, until I get some money and figure out how to order international shipping from US.
The model number of the original floppy drive as seen on the original label is 'FD-05HG'. (No photo, but I can confirm it was it.)
On the other side, I have no ThinkPad-compatible Floppy drive on me, and I believe in MOST CASES it would work - even BIOS has an option to add the B drive. And by the way, the D drive - a Hard Disk. Instead of internal floppy drive, you could add a CD drive or a second HDD. Sadly, I have no proofs of the last one, but CD's did exist and thankfully they must be bootable, unlike PCMCIA eh.
Edit: In fact, FMWORLD does confirm that the CD-ROM/FDD can be replaced with an 1.3GB HDD drive or even an additional battery pack.
As you can see from this promotional poster, there is an interchangeable slot for modules I've described earlier & battery compartment on the left and it's actually exact model I have. Yeah, there is still no additional HDD on the picture, maybe it was produced later, when "time for upgrade has come". But, on the other side I can't be sure if the D drive is actually for an external HDD. (It did and it does.)
I did make the D drive letter work while I was dualbooting broken Windows 95 and Windows 3.1. Basically it was an internal HDD split into two partitions - for C and D drive. Also not really sure if the OS could see other partitions, in case it wasn't specified by BIOS, but the last one surely supports only two disk drives. (Of course, Windows can run much more drives as virtual, well basically MS-DOS can).
This post is about everything and nothing, just gathering some info until the internet is completely destroyed ;) What i'll try to do, is to make own connector for internal HDD. I'll update this post or add another one below when something would work out (or not).
Source for the edit info:
www.fmworld.net
this is an outro
