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I'm trying to get data off a 2.5 inch hard drive from an old laptop (a Macintosh PowerBook Duo 230), the drive is model: WDS-2120

Drive connector

It looks like a standard mini-IDE hard drive, except it only has 40 pins then a break and 8 additional pins -I would guess these 8 for jumpers. Instead of the normal missing 20 pin, the missing pin is in position 17.

Any suggestion on an adapter or the name of this connector type?

Braiam
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digarch
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    Does this answer your question? What is the connector on an old fashion IDE laptop called? – Pylsa Feb 24 '20 at 20:48
  • Not quite, the drive in that post is a 2.5" with 44 pins then a break then 4 pins for jumpers. The drive I'm working with is 2.5 inches but only has 40 pins, then a break and 8 pins (which I assume are also for jumpers) - Thanks though! – digarch Feb 24 '20 at 21:02
  • Well, unless the 8 pins are actually for delivering power, which would leave 40 pins for possibly nonstandard-shaped IDE? (I'm not sure if there's anything other, besides SCSI – which AFAIK needs more pins total.) What was the laptop's manufacturer and model? – u1686_grawity Feb 24 '20 at 21:09
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    macintosh powerbook duo 230 – digarch Feb 24 '20 at 21:15
  • I'm suspicious that this might fit a 50-pin connector. But that would leave it open to a myriad of proprietary ATA and some SCSI connectors... would need to try to identify one with a matching key pin. – Bob Feb 24 '20 at 21:16
  • See https://superuser.com/questions/1457529/1991-ms-dos-laptop-how-can-i-read-the-data-from-this-disk – SPRBRN Feb 24 '20 at 21:17
  • 2 of the pins are for power since the standard 40 pins don't deliver power. – cybernard Feb 24 '20 at 21:21
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    @user1686: SCSI only needs 25 pins. On a 50-pin SCSI-2 ribbon connector (non differential) all odd (or even pins) are connected to ground. In fact Apple used to use a "special" SCSI cable with 25-pin D-Sub connectors (AKA a fully wired 25-pin serial cable) on both ends to connect external devices to early Macs (using the cable/connector shield as ground). And Commodore did the same with the Amiga A520 SCSI controller. I actually made my own adapter cable (50-pin ribbon to 25-D-sub) back in the day to attach several regular SCSI drives to my A520 as external drives. The thing still works. – Tonny Feb 25 '20 at 09:35
  • @Criggie, the drive is a standard SCSI drive, yes, but the connector is not a standard SCSI connector. – Mark Feb 25 '20 at 23:47
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    @Mark fair point - doesn't change the "lack of research effort" – Criggie Feb 26 '20 at 00:07
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    A hard disk recovery service might get the data off at a very reasonable price, seeing as it is a working drive. – Andrew Morton Feb 26 '20 at 16:39

3 Answers3

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This is a PowerBook special and is not a PATA/IDE connector at all. It's a SCSI connector! Apparently a very custom SCSI connector that isn't really supported elsewhere, though it appears to be electrically (if not mechanically) compatible with standard SCSI-2 so an adapter is possible.

Some more info at: http://vintagemacmuseum.com/reading-powerbook-2-5-scsi-hard-drives/

There's some discussion over at https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/31589-40p-scsi-to-50p-scsi/

There are also devices available that emulate such a drive (using a SD card as backing storage). Note the pinout in the photo matches your drive.

Bob
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    @Baldrickk As with many laptops, especially of that era, there probably weren't many, if any, actual standard options. I'm not entirely sure this wasn't actually a standard, either, but if it was ... it certainly wasn't particularly popular or common. – Bob Feb 25 '20 at 12:45
  • What's the difference between electrically and mechanically compatible? – Hashim Aziz Feb 25 '20 at 13:41
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    @Hashim "Mechanically compatible" would mean that a standard SCSI-2 connector would fit the drive. "Electrically compatible" means that while a standard connector won't physically fit, an adapter could be made to connect to a SCSI-2 interface, because all of the required signals/pins are available. – Shamtam Feb 25 '20 at 13:49
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    @Bob a standard of some type, sure. But like you say, not a common one. The other example that comes to mind is the iMac circa 2012 (I think) - the HDDs used in that are identical to "standard" SATA drives (in fact, an identical "standard" SATA drive was made by the manufacturer, which I believe was Seagate) but the apple drive had a unique temperature sensor connection instead of using SMART. "standard" drives did not have this connection, so unless you bought the apple version at a markup, no temperature would be sensed and fans would run at max speed in the normally quiet machine. – Baldrickk Feb 25 '20 at 15:26
  • Update: I purchased this adapter from the vintagemacmuseum post (http://www.cablesonline.com/25lapscsihar.html) and it looks like it would work if part of the drive didn't stick out to meet the edge of the pins. The adapter plugs in halfway before the adapter board hits the edge of the drive. I think it's time to contact a recovery service. Thanks for all your help!! – digarch Mar 06 '20 at 15:20
  • @digarch You may be able to trim the connector slightly, if it's a close fit. – Bob Mar 20 '20 at 03:38
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According to EveryMac the laptop you mentioned uses a SCSI connector for its internal drive connections.

Standard Hard Drive: 80 MB, 120 MB* Int. HD Interface: SCSI

Details: *By default, this model is equipped with an 80 MB or 120 MB internal SCSI hard drive.

Emphasis mine.

The 8 pins to the left of your image will probably be used to indicate the SCSI ID of the drive, normally using jumpers. The original version of SCSI could daisy-chain up to 8 devices.

Community
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Burgi
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It's SCSI. The 8 pins on the left are for power. There are no jumper pins; SCSI auto-negotiates. You can get devices like EX Connect to hook it up to a machine.

dave
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