What is this connector called:
I have a bunch of old TEAC, Toshiba and IBM laptop CD-ROM drives that use this connector, and wanted to put them to good use with a possible adapter.
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looks like a 50 pin JAE to me
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if its really old then maybe a 50pin scsi
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I’m pretty sure lots of devices like that from that time period would have a proprietary interface card that would go in to a PC Card (PCMCIA) slot, or were some dedicated expansion port on the laptop itself (perhaps some bastardization of IDE).
For instance, IBM Thinkpads had proprietary external device ports for floppy drives. If I recall correctly, it was only capable of talking to a floppy drive.
It could be a SCSI interface, but unless there’s an “ID” select switch or jumper arrangement, I doubt that.
Your best bet is to search the specific model number and see if there’s any information about it.
I think you are correct. I can find the adapter on amazon.com (Item no B0058V4TH6), but none on aliexpress. What gives?
That’s some iteration of SCSI, or the USB of 80s and early 90s. Looks to be ultra-SCSI 3 but I’m not sure. Search for the manual of the laptop model on archive.org.
On a second look, I’m going with JAE.
These are “internal” slim CDROM drives.
I guess a valid question would be…Do these have any practical use these days? I mean, you could make some sort of Floppytron style device.
For practical usage, for $30 or so you can buy a faster DVD reader/writer.
What’s your vision?
If its the ones on the back of cdrom or early dvd drives it is an scsi micro.
They were also used for laptop floppy drives.
Usually many of these drives had a small adapter screwed to the back that connected to the interface cable.
Optical slimline drives were never built with ide interface. But many of the full height drives were.
Now many of the optical slimlines have the mini sata interface where both the power and data buss is on one two section connector fastened to the shell or soldered directly on the motherboard.
Good rule of thumb any interface with more than 48 pins is scsi.
Good question, other Chinese retailers have the connector so I don’t think it’s because of government censorship on the name.
Pretty much every variant of the ultrabay that laptops used from 1992-2008 used the IDE interface. The IDE interface for the bay stuck around even after sata drives were being used for main storage.
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Some of those hot swap CD/DVD drives use a random arbitrary vendor specific connector that often let them repurpose the bay as various things… the drive itself was often just a normal IDE laptop drive with a little adaptor stuck on the back - usually in such a way that it wasn’t obvious it was an adaptor… that way you buy the official drive to replace a dead one instead of a cheaper alternative you swap the adaptor on.
The reason that I am into this is that, on the rare occasion that I have to use a CD/DVD-ROM I have to unpack an old external bay, plug power cables, plug usb cables, connect to the IDE drive and use a small pin to unload the tray from the dying plextor drive that I use. A smaller drive with less cabling would be so much better, plus I have a bunch of spares so I will never run out.
Example drive that uses that port: IBM 08K9784
If anybody is interested, I am uploading a clearer photo of the port, plus a passive adapter that I one of the laptops would use internally converting that port to something that I still don’t know what is (you can take a guess at that too!).
Port:
Adapter:
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I think as others suggested, JAE 50 pin to USB is what you are after, like this
https://www.walmart.com/ip/USB-to-JAE-50-Pin-Slim-CD-Slim-CD-DVD-Adapter/653670111
But that costs like ten bucks, and might need external power brick, if it is even available ANYWHERE
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