[rescue] laptop drive adapter

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2002 at 01:16:54PM -0600, Scott Newell wrote:
> I've got an old 486 laptop at work (8MB ram, 200 MB drive, no nic, no
> slots) that I'd like to put a very minimal OS on (freebsd, linux,
> something).  The end result will hopefully be a small machine that can be
> shipped to subcontractors so they can test out some embedded hardware with
> GDB.  To that end, I need to get an OS on it!  My current plan is to stick
> the drive on a desktop and do the install and setup on a much faster machine.
> 
> Has anyone seen a cheap source for adapter cables that will run a notebook
> IDE drive on a desktop machine?  I know that I've seen 'em before, but I
> can't remember where.

You can buy little adapter cards for less than $20 that do this.  One
end is the notebook connectors, the other end is normal IDE.

You could also examine PLIP or connecting over a serial connection -
there are boot disks that will support doing this - I assume that you
have a floppy on the laptop.

Cordially

./patrick