Hello all,
I've been hunting for an internal LS120 drive for a very long time. What I'd like to ask is for more information about these drives, or rather, specifically manufacturers and models. The Matsushita/Panasonic drive I know about, but seems to command a premium.
Were there any other drives manufactured that I can search for? I've never owned one and would like to have something like it in one of my rigs.
If you're looking for an inexpensive model, I've had some luck repurposing external LS-120 USB drives as internal drives like this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/imation-super-disk-d … CkAAOSw7g9gALhf
They have a 3.5 LS-120 drive using a USB to IDE interface on the inside. You just have to dismantle it and remove the USB adapter. It then works just fine on an IDE cable (I have also gotten them to work with an IDE-SATA adapter). If I had a complaint, these drives don't have 3.5 faceplates. I haven't found a replacement faceplate for my drives yet, but someone could try to 3D print one.
Imation made 3 models for the Mac, SD-USB-M, M2, and M3. The M(1) is the slowest, but I find they have good compatibility. The M2 and M3 models are faster, but I've gotten only one of three that I purchased to actually work again. Very temperamental drives.
I've had good luck with the SD-USB-M2 drives. They're all pretty temperamental as the alignment on the heads is quite sensitive, sometimes that equates to not reading LS-120 disks, but they can often still read floppy disks because that's using another set of heads. They're as complex as ZIP drives and sensitive to shock movements.
You might have more luck with the laptop type, most of them were made later than the regular 3.5" size and so they generally work more reliably.
At this point I have a lifetime supply of both so here's the text search I do on ebay to find all the superdrives: (lkm,"sd+usb+m","sd+ppd")+(drive,fdd)+-(flash,hdd,hard,clarion,hdmi,cvt,belt,tape,bmw,kymco,sata)
To use the laptop type, you can get hold of this adapter to use them with desktop PCs 😀 https://electronicsluckydip.com/store/LS120_Adapter_PCB.html
As an aside, ages ago I designed up a faceplate to use the 'shucked' external drives in a desktop PC. Here are the files before I forget about them again. Here's what it looks like: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
That faceplate looks great!
Thermalwrong, did you ever got to design a faceplate for laptop models? I have 2 or 3, none came with a bezel/faceplate.