Floppy Drive installation help needed. \ VOGONS

Floppy Drive installation help needed.

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First post, by Megadisk

Posted on 2015-09-24, 16:09

Megadisk Offline

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Hello,
I have a Gateway GT5678 (MS-7399 mobo) PC that I'd like to install a floppy drive into it. This PC came with a "portable media drive bay" instead of a floppy, but it can easily be replaced for a FDD and the motherboard also has a connection for it.
Now, I have many spare Dell FDD's with ribbon cables but none of them seem to fit the GT5678 motherboard. The connector still has the 34 pins layout (missing a couple of them), but one single pin is reversed compared to all of the ones I've ever seen.

Does anyone knows if this is some sort of proprietary connector?, It looks like if I drill a hole on a dell ribbon cable it could fit, but I'm unsure about the pinout. Any help is much appreciated.

A couple of crappy pics.

Reply 1 of 3, by Stiletto

Posted on 2015-09-30, 21:14

Stiletto Offline

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Ah I remember that connector! Yes, I'm pretty sure it's proprietary. Anyone else? 😀

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

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Reply 2 of 3, by Skyscraper

Posted on 2015-09-30, 21:24

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Its not just Dell but probably mostly OEMs.

I have both floppy drives, cables and motherboards where the rows have switched place so pin 1 is where pin 2 should be and so on. There are also IDE cables, and IDE interfaces on motherboards and expansion boards with the rows switched but those are at least following the standard on the HDD side of the cable.

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Reply 3 of 3, by Stiletto

Posted on 2015-09-30, 21:27

Stiletto Offline

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I dunno, if it's a "media bay connector" I'd be assuming that it actually is using USB broken out plus a bunch of other things the media bay thingy offers (front panel audio maybe?) and I wouldn't suspect this of actually being a floppy connector at all.

I used to work on these a lot but it's been a really long time. 😀

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

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