Re: Toshiba 2.1G in 755

[Tim Tyhurst <tim@excelsior.com>]

> Interestingly enough, the fellow at Micro Sense said that IBM's 17mm 2.1G
> drive DOESN'T work in IBM TP 755's even though the Toshiba does. Is that the
> experience out there? Has anyone tried to get the IBM drive (DCRA-22160) to
> work in a 755?

It has been my experience that various IBM drive models have different
settings for the IDE master vs. slave jumper settings. I recently picked
up an DSOA-21080 for my 760C which has this problem relative to to the
stock 720Mb drive.

What happens seems to be this: the Thinkpad (or docking station) in which
the drive is installed is responsible for setting the master vs. slave
ID of the drive. On Thinkpad drives, shorting the appropriate pin pair
makes the drive a master. Unfortunately, on some of the IBM drives
(including the DSOA-20180), it's the *absence* of the jumper that makes
the unit a master -- the presence of the jumper makes the drive a slave.

Now, what I've been doing so far is just using a bit of tape on
the caddy connector to prevent the ThinkPad from erroneously
jumpering the device to be a slave. Of course, this won't work
if the drive is supposed to be a slave (presumably whenever the
drive is in a docking station?) but it works for me right now, anyway.

--
Tim Tyhurst                  tim@excelsior.com