IDE 40/44 pin adapter to work in Amiga 1200,a bit "dirty" hack. Possible?

[hda]

Hello to the Amiga family.
I recently got myself an A 1200,in what seems to be quite good and almost unused condition. It was in original state,without a hard drive. At the moment I am in the process of upgrading it with all the cool stuff that I feel the need for,but since I am a nerd that got so much other PC-related parts laying around I was looking through my stuff to see if I had a way to connect a hard drive to it just to be able to test it a bit further.

I did have an old laptop IDE hard drive,but no cable. The other day I found my old Sat-receiver which had an little board (I do have picture,but can`t get it out here,for some reason) that was bought to be able to put a small laptop IDE hd into receiver,even if the receiver had a bigger IDE cable for the normal size hd. To make that story short.. The receiver could only handle 5200 rpm drives and at that time the all normal size hard drives that I found was 7200. So I had to get a smaller type,but then the cable did not match,so I sourced down an adapter to plug into the drive, and to that tiny pcb I could now hook up the bigger normal size IDE-cable,and connect power to the pcb. Worked like a charm..

I realize that what I would need to do this time,is sorta reverse of all that. Because the part that went into the small HD last time need to go into IDE-connector in my 1200,and the power lead on the pcb (adapter) need no power,in fact to power the HD my idea was to just use an outside power source I got from an old external HD-casing.

The weird thing is I normally got okay patience,and the ordering of the actual storage I would put into it would probably be here before end of this month.. At the same time though,in these days I got so much spare time on my hand,so if I could make a HD ready within WinUAE and then connect it somehow that would be awesome to at least see the 1200 run anything.

Would this work ?

Although even if it works,it would not be a pretty sight with HD outside and IDE-cable coming out from the 1200,but I got so curious about this for a few days now,and from time to time I came back to the idea in my head. I threw the idea away at first,because it was opposite. The amazing thing is that I thought I`d have an 44 pin cable laying around somewhere,but no.. The ones I had (grew up with pc) was normal IDE cable,and floppy disk cable.. And I thought the floppy disk cable was the one I was looking for..but I realize its just a very very long time since I had to deal with IDE-cables I had forgot most about them. I guess the first time I came across a 44 pin connector was on my first laptop.

Any thoughts would be deeply appreciated.

PS. I am so n00b when it comes to Amiga that my experience so far with it is through emulation,and few times visited friends and played on Amiga 500 over 20-30 years ago...

[hda]

Here is the picture. (I hope)

[aeberbach]

Be very careful. Most such adapters will swap the two rows of pins so that you have all the signals going to the ground row and vice versa. If you can verify that pin 1 on the 44-pin side is actually connected to pin 1 on the 40-pin side, and so on for pin 2, 3 etc then go for it.

When the Mac mini came out it too used a 44-pin drive. I made an adapter (had PCBs manufactured) allowing large, 40-pin hard drives to be used - at the time there was no adapter that worked though adapters going the other way, to use a 44-pin drive in a full-size PC needing 40-pin drives, were common.

If you want such a PCB for just cost of postage, let me know, I still have some. It may be that you have the right adapter already - but verify it before trying to use it with equipment you care about! I destroyed a laptop finding this out...

[hda]

Originally Posted by aeberbach

Be very careful. Most such adapters will swap the two rows of pins so that you have all the signals going to the ground row and vice versa. If you can verify that pin 1 on the 44-pin side is actually connected to pin 1 on the 40-pin side, and so on for pin 2, 3 etc then go for it.

When the Mac mini came out it too used a 44-pin drive. I made an adapter (had PCBs manufactured) allowing large, 40-pin hard drives to be used - at the time there was no adapter that worked though adapters going the other way, to use a 44-pin drive in a full-size PC needing 40-pin drives, were common.

If you want such a PCB for just cost of postage, let me know, I still have some. It may be that you have the right adapter already - but verify it before trying to use it with equipment you care about! I destroyed a laptop finding this out...

Good evening aeberbach,and many thanks for this very insightful and helpful reply.
This was just the info I needed to know.. In fact I had forgot to check the pcb if it had number 1,2 and 39 , 40 marked for the 40 pin connector. At first when reading your reply I got optimistic just on the fact that I knew the 40 pin connector allows me to reverse it (I think) as it only has the pins,but no casing around it with notch on middle as hard drives themselves got. It does however have a missing center pin,or almost center,so I think I used it with notch on cable that direction when this thing was in use in its previous task.

However,to be even more sure after checking the pcb I see markings for 1,2 and opposite site its 39 and 40. And it checks out fine after tracing the tracks.

I do however have a follow up question that could be my best way to control check this even double up. Would the red side on the 40pin cable be the last pin,meaning furthest away from 1 and 2 ,and facing 39 and 40 ? This might be a very simple or even hard way to explain what i meant,and more complex than it need to be,but my bet is that you know exactly what I meant anyway. "Edit" , I just looked on the Hard drive end,and the missing pin in middle makes me think red side is supposed to be pin 1. I guess its both negative and positive sides to have an option to reverse it.. Now its gone so long I forgot even anything about the several hundred times dealing with ide-cables before. Good to refresh the memory. Searching on google also gives me that answer,or more precise : "The red stripe located on one edge of the gray ribbon cable serves as an identification stripe during the installation process. It is used to prevent reversed connections, which could be damaging to electronics. Generally, the red conductor is paired with pin 1 on a connector." . But I realize that even though I`ve used IDE-cables on many computers(pc),only this pcb have as far I know the option to put it in wrong. All the computers I`ve been dealing with since 1994 had the sockets with notch,so it always ended up being a one way only solution,and then that means I have only one time in my life had to know what pin is red stripe.. Amazing if that is true.. It does make me wonder what google means with "Generally,the red conductor is paired with pin 1 on a connector." In what kinda weird situation would this be different,ie outside of "generally" ...

As additional info I can see that the power connectors - (ground) goes to pin 2 on the 40 connector . Even though that molex would be omitted, I still tried to trace it because I know there could be hot pins on the 44 from the A1200 if I`m not mistaken,and I feel I should be sure the pcb is not doing something it should not do in this case.

Again thanks so much for the help.

Best regards from Norway.
hda

[aeberbach]

OK, well as long as you check. Just don't forget to identify pin 1 on both drives to be sure where your adapter is going to connect it, and watch out that when you are looking at PIN numbers you are looking at the same sex on both ends - if looking at the plug that will connect to the drive on one kind of drive be sure that the pins that are the same are in the plug, not the pins, that connect to the other kind of drive.