Does the drive itself have labeling on it - like an IBM FRU or some other information you could look up?

There are two main parts for this drive.
1) The shell/case which is FRU 05K6187 (or ASM 05K5907)
2) The drive itself, which is FRU 05K8874 (or ASM 20L1931)

The case has a mechanical switch that allows the drive to slide out (for repairs/replacement I guess)

Quick searching returns this being a drive for a ThinkPad 600, which has a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_600

The connector, thus far, appears to be "IBM external floppy drive port" - looks to be an IBM unique thing. No luck searching for adapters with the available data, and I'm not sure what you'd hope to adapt such a device to.

I had one of these for my Thinkpad 240. If you open up the case you'll probably find the drive inside has a standard ribbon cable connection, might be easier to connect to that.

My Thinkpad 770 uses the same floppy drive/connector

Can confirm that that connector is for a bewildering variety of IBM ThinkPads made from the mid to late 90s - my 365X (made in 1996) and 600X (2000) share this same connector.

obobskivich wrote:

Quick searching returns this being a drive for a ThinkPad 600

bjt wrote:

I had one of these for my Thinkpad 240.

ODwilly wrote:

My Thinkpad 770 uses the same floppy drive/connector

Sutekh94 wrote:

Can confirm that that connector is for a bewildering variety of IBM ThinkPads

Thanks for the help!

obobskivich wrote:

looks to be an IBM unique thing. No luck searching for adapters with the available data, and I'm not sure what you'd hope to adapt such a device to.

True. My searches also returned nothing.

bjt wrote:

If you open up the case you'll probably find the drive inside has a standard ribbon cable connection, might be easier to connect to that.

There is an external shell, and there is the drive. The two can be separated for easy repairs/replacement.

Here is the first connector we see on the inner drive : a brown connector with 40 connectors on each side.

But that is not really the drive's connector. The drive is still nested in this rectangular enclosure.
Separating the drive from its plastic container gave surprising results. The drive connects to its container with a short ribbon.

There is sadly no standard floppy connector on the drive.

Looking closer, the ribbon is one-sided. (The blue plastic covers the opposite side and is non-conductive, probably there to help straighten the ribbon)

(continued)

Looking closer, I count 26 connections on this.

So here's where we are at right now :
Floppy drive (26 pins) --> Rectangular enclosure (40/80 pins) --> External enclosure and wire (13/26 pins) --> Laptop

Since there is circuitry, but no chips, I'm deducing (correct me if I'm wrong) by the lowest common denominator that only a maximum of 26 pins are "live" and serve a purpose. Maybe even less.

Also worth noting are the inscriptions on the 26->40 converter.

Typical floppy cables have 34 pins, 17 of them are actually ground. That means only 17 of them are left to carry data.

I'm deducing (again, correct me if I'm wrong) that maybe some of the ground wires could be potentially combined, thus lowering the required number of wires, from 34 to 26 for a "proprietary" standard, while still retaining the standard floppy drive construction and communication logic.

And since power does not come through a separate cable, that means (If we look at the standard floppy power connector) that we lose another 4 wires. That would leave 17 for data, 4 for power, giving a total of 21; leaving 5 for grounds.

My overall guess is that I'm dealing with a standard floppy drive with a non-standard connector.
In fact with enough patience, I could probably build myself an [IBM proprietary] to [Standard Floppy] connector.

Do you think I'm headed in the right direction?

Beegle wrote:

Do you think I'm headed in the right direction?

Indeed. Someone I know did exactly that, and it worked. 😀

Just a quick update for anyone reading... I have found a female connector for this drive's cable.
I'll start working on a prototype for the IBM to IDE adapter when it arrives.

Hi Beegle, any new on that project of yours? I've got a similar issue (26 pins floppy drive that I want to replace with a standard 34 pins one so I need to make an adapter) so I could learn a thing or two from your experience 😀

Jonas-fr wrote:

Hi Beegle, any new on that project of yours? I've got a similar issue (26 pins floppy drive that I want to replace with a standard 34 pins one so I need to make an adapter) so I could learn a thing or two from your experience 😀

Hey Jonas... sadly the part I ordered never arrived and the refund gave me trouble with the seller, so this project has been put on hold, for now.
I'll chime back when I start it again.

i made a laptop floppy to standard pc floppy adapter a couple of years back, also made an opposite adapter that did work (26 to 34 pin) but no photos of that, and it's stored in my parents house.

Apologies for the thread necro, but hopefully this helps someone else. I found out this is a 26-pin "Very High Density Cable Interconnect" aka VHDCI connector. Apparently, IBM made an adapter to convert it to standard Centronics parallel, and they are still readily available.
http://suntekpc.com/htm-2/adapter-db25m-vh26f … ibm-08k6359.htm

There are quite a few available from this source:
https://www.alancomputech.com/ibm-08k6359-fdd … el-08k6360.html
The FRU is 08K6359 for that part, in case that source ever dries up.

Seems like the pinout of the 26 pin connector is available.

http://www.mattmillman.com/attaching-a-5%C2%B … attached-to-it/

Did anyone ever get this working using the parallel port adapter onto a different laptop system (ie: compaq / toshiba - will they recognize this floppy with parallel adapter?)

thx