PCMCIA to IDE? or IDE to Paralell?

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:32 pm

I have recetly come into the custody of an old 486 compaq laptop

this thing has a 700mb HD and Win95, but it has no Cd drive and lacks the bay for one

However it does a PCMCIA card slot and a paralell port

this got my thinking, i have lots of old CD drives lying around, this could be a use for one of them

so my question is is there a simple way of making one of the items suggested in the title?

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:37 pm

theres a company that makes pcmcia cards that interface with its own cd rom drives (the parallel card i made my PSX controller adapter out of was one).

they are called Backpack or something

theres no way to directly convert parallel to IDE without much decoding circutry (and not to mention custom drivers), and im guessing it probably is the same story for pcmcia.

so yes, perhaps you can find a used one cheap on ebay, things like this have been around for a while.

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 4:40 pm

Not easy to make, but cheap to buy:
http://halted.com/ccp21011-backpack-ban ... -20972.htm

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:11 am

thats what i was afraid of, oh well

looks like im gonna have to pay up

never hurts to look for a shortcut