Retrieved my old iMac from home as it's apparently been shutting down intermittently. Solved that - the psu was overheating. But since machine is already on leopard, then i've no real need for the optical drive and this gave me the idea of using the space for a 2nd hard drive. There's no room for a 3.5 drive - at least not without major case mods - but a 2.5 looks like it'd fit.
Looking here
http://developer.apple.com/document.../apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002046-CH206-TPXREF101
shows that the optical drive is an ide/pata drive. But when you open the iMac up you see the physical interface is a laptop mini 50 way plug - no great surprise - guess all slot loaders from then will have been the same.
There are plenty of converter/bridge boards to convert from this 50 way to Sata, but the gender on the 50 way connector is wrong. These boards are designed to allow the old slot loader to fit in a new sata based machine. This is an example;
http://www.directron.com/atapitosata.html
So i thought i'd be able to find a cable to swap the gender of the 50 way - but after searching for ages have come up empty handed.
Anyone have any ideas? Maybe this has been done already by someone else and i can just copy their method
Looking here
http://developer.apple.com/document.../apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002046-CH206-TPXREF101
shows that the optical drive is an ide/pata drive. But when you open the iMac up you see the physical interface is a laptop mini 50 way plug - no great surprise - guess all slot loaders from then will have been the same.
There are plenty of converter/bridge boards to convert from this 50 way to Sata, but the gender on the 50 way connector is wrong. These boards are designed to allow the old slot loader to fit in a new sata based machine. This is an example;
http://www.directron.com/atapitosata.html
So i thought i'd be able to find a cable to swap the gender of the 50 way - but after searching for ages have come up empty handed.
Anyone have any ideas? Maybe this has been done already by someone else and i can just copy their method