Hi Everyone
I've got a Gridcase 286 laptop and both the hard drive and the FDD are faulty. It's a really cool design machine but they've essentially integrated fairly standard looking IDE and floppy drives directly onto a flat riser board with no cables between them. Which makes it really hard to replace because both the HDD and FDD have fairly unique connector layout and nothing exactly matches. The original FD drive spins and tries to read but doesn't. I've checked all the mechanisms, checked it spins, cleaned the head, replaced capactitors - nothing.
Anyway, I've worked a way around the HDD connector but the floppy eludes me. It's an EPSON SMD-240 which appears to have the same 34 pins data connector and 4 pin power, however by using a male to female extension lead (which the SMD-240 'works' the same way as when connected directly, so I know my connector is good, however no other drive shows any sign of life as replacement - including Gotek.
I think they've switched some of the pins around inside the SMD-240 but can find very little information on the drive. Has anyone else had similar experiences with Gridcase machines or anything that might help?
SMD-240 seem quite rare - nobody seems to have one or have sold one.
Thanks
I've got a Gridcase 286 laptop and both the hard drive and the FDD are faulty. It's a really cool design machine but they've essentially integrated fairly standard looking IDE and floppy drives directly onto a flat riser board with no cables between them. Which makes it really hard to replace because both the HDD and FDD have fairly unique connector layout and nothing exactly matches. The original FD drive spins and tries to read but doesn't. I've checked all the mechanisms, checked it spins, cleaned the head, replaced capactitors - nothing.
Anyway, I've worked a way around the HDD connector but the floppy eludes me. It's an EPSON SMD-240 which appears to have the same 34 pins data connector and 4 pin power, however by using a male to female extension lead (which the SMD-240 'works' the same way as when connected directly, so I know my connector is good, however no other drive shows any sign of life as replacement - including Gotek.
I think they've switched some of the pins around inside the SMD-240 but can find very little information on the drive. Has anyone else had similar experiences with Gridcase machines or anything that might help?
SMD-240 seem quite rare - nobody seems to have one or have sold one.
Thanks