New HDD in old 286 computer

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roylaza

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Sep 6, 2014
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Hi Everyone

I'm re-building my childhood computer, and am trying to connect a relatively newer hard disk drive into an old Triumph 286 Plus computer.

The problem is that the computer has an HDD connector with two rows of pins with no gaps
Picture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By9tY9HkhoBbLXVCb0xPUWZqNms/edit?usp=sharing

While the connector at the end of my hard drive's ribbon has a gap in one of the rows of holes
Picture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By9tY9HkhoBba2o3bHJYc1FCZFk/edit?usp=sharing

Does anyone know if there is some kind of adapter between the two connection types? and if you know, how is each connection type referred to?

Thank you very much in advance.

 
Solution
M
The "blocked" hole in the IDE cable is a keyway used to prevent the cable being inserted the wrong way around.

You can safely cut off the corresponding pin using a pair of flush cutters or it is possible to find (mainly older) IDE cables that either don't have the keyway or have a removable plastic plug-pin in it which can be pulled out using Blu-Tack or something similar.

As Geofelt mentioned, the coloured stripe down one edge of the cable corresponds with pin 1 on the header.

You will find that you can't use all the capacity of a modern hard drive with an old PC. Assuming the BIOS was written with some "future-proofing" in mind to allow for drives vastly bigger than those that would have been current at the time, it will recognise...
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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I think you are looking at IDE connectors.
Looking at one of my old ide dvd drives, I see where the central set of pins has a missing pin in the center that would mate with the end of the cables in your second pic.
It might be keyed that way to get the pins oriented properly. On my cables, there is no blocked opening, but there is a red stripe on one side that should identify pin #1 that needs to be matched up with pin # 1 on both the motherboard and device.
 
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molletts

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The "blocked" hole in the IDE cable is a keyway used to prevent the cable being inserted the wrong way around.

You can safely cut off the corresponding pin using a pair of flush cutters or it is possible to find (mainly older) IDE cables that either don't have the keyway or have a removable plastic plug-pin in it which can be pulled out using Blu-Tack or something similar.

As Geofelt mentioned, the coloured stripe down one edge of the cable corresponds with pin 1 on the header.

You will find that you can't use all the capacity of a modern hard drive with an old PC. Assuming the BIOS was written with some "future-proofing" in mind to allow for drives vastly bigger than those that would have been current at the time, it will recognise a maximum of 528MB of capacity. It may or may not boot successfully if a drive larger than that is connected - some will simply "cap" the size of the drive if it is bigger than the board's maximum while others hang or give an error..

Hard disk manufacturers used to supply software with their "big" (>528MB) drives which allowed the extra capacity to be used. You may be able to find a copy somewhere in a dusty corner of the internet. (I think Seagate may have called theirs DiskWizard or something, if my memory serves me correctly from when I bought an 850MB drive in the early '90s.)

Are you based somewhere in Europe? If so, I could probably send you a 500-odd MB disk (and possibly an old-style cable if I can find one).

Stephen
 
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Solution
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roylaza

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Sep 6, 2014
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Thank for the reply

So, if I remove the two middle pins on the HDD connector on the motherboard to allow the ribbon to connect the drive should work? are these pins redundant?

PS: If I am to remove just one pin, how would I know which one (the upper of the lower)

Thanks again




 
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roylaza

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Well after plugging the drive in, I need to define the hard drive in the BIOS, and this computer needs its CMOS battery replaced, so I assume I'll have to do that next.

The BIOS allows to select from several pre-defined sets of different HEADS\CYLINDER etc.. configurations

I assume after I get the CMOS battery replaced so these settings can be saved, I'll need to go over all the configurations one by one until the drive is discovered?
 
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molletts

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You can usually select a user-defined drive type (I think it was normally type 47 on most BIOSes) where you can put in the cylinder/head/sector geometry of the drive directly. It should say somewhere on the drive's label what its CHS figures are. Most drives from the last 15 years or so will say 255/16/63 which equates to about 8.4GB but your board will almost certainly limit you to 1024/16/63 which is the origin of the 528MB limit. (1024 cylinders * 16 heads * 63 sectors * 512 bytes per sector = just over 528 million bytes)

Hope this helps,
Stephen
 
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