Hey folks,
My cousin was cleaning up his attic and came across a very old external hard drive case with IDE hardrive (formatted for use with prodos). He told me that he used it for his Apple //e when he was in college (1988). From his recollection, it was working fine right up until he plugged it into a friends PC, and from there on it never worked. The case has its own power supply and comes with a serial or parallel cable (not familar with these cables, sorry). I've tried just powering it up without hooking it up to the //c but no lights come on or hear sounds of hdd revolving. I then also plugged the cable into the back of the //c and still the same result. I'd like to get this working, and im thinking there may be a blown capacitor or resistor, but dont know how or what to check. If anybody can help me out i'm willing to take pictures of anything on the circuitry if that would help me restore this hhd. Just curious, how common were these Harddrives used with the apple ii computers? maybe i can source a parts kit. anyways any help would be appreciated.
btw, i checked all fuses and they are good.
Mr. Fix - you probably need to fix the power supply first. The drive power is likely the same as all the others these days, so any other PC power supply you can come up with will work. So connect some other power supply to the drive, and see if it will spin up then.
Hi,
I do not recall any external IDE hard drives for the IIe. SCSI, SASI, and a few others that were special like the CMS card. It might have some sort of conversion to SCSI. What kind of card did he use in the IIe? Asking him might help jog some other memories.
This will not work on a IIc. Only one HD would work on the IIc smart port that was an Chinock c HD.
Are you sure it is a IDE? SCSI, usually have a DB25 plugs or centronics. They usually have 2 of them, and most of the cases had ID number selector. Not all of them but most. These look like a serial or parallel type.
Take Care
thanks for the replies, i will try the PC power supply and see if that will turn it on, this is a very good idea.
I will take pictures of the entire enclosure (inside and outside), HDD, and the cable this weekend.
Telling us the brand name on the drive would likely help. Odds are that your drive is SCSI or SASI but there are other possibilities.