What is this 50-pin connector on the back of old laptop CD-ROM drives called?

Hardware
#1

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.

#2

looks like a 50 pin JAE to me

#3

if its really old then maybe a 50pin scsi

1 Like
#4

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.

#5

I think you are correct. I can find the adapter on amazon.com (Item no B0058V4TH6), but none on aliexpress. What gives?

#6

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.

#7

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?