WTB - UltraBay 2000 Portable Drive Bay [FOUND but please post drivers if found]

[Edward Mendelson]

This isn't essential, but it could be useful for making and restoring backups from my T23. Looking for the UltraBay 2000 Portable Drive Bay, preferably with the PCMCIA interface, which doesn't need a separate power supply.

EDIT: I should have marked this as found a long time ago! Apologies.

[cadillacmike68]

Ed, I have some. You are referring to the HDD trays that go in T20 / T30 and probably some other x2x x3x series - correct?

Ok maybe not. I have the trays that slide into the Ultrabay, but not a "portable drive bay"

[Edward Mendelson]

Mike,

Not the second HDD tray - it's an external box that connects either to a PC Card or a USB port. You plug a CD or second-HDD tray or whatever into the box. Picture here:

https://www.cnet.com/products/ibm-porta ... sb-series/

[rkawakami]

Mike,

This is something what Ed is looking for:



This one is the Ultrabayslim version; the one that's on the 600-series systems.

edit: Slow to the game... while I was taking the photos, getting them on my computer and using PaintShopPro to stitch them together, Ed found a stock photo online.

[Edward Mendelson]

edit: Slow to the game... while I was taking the photos, getting them on my computer and using PaintShopPro to stitch them together, Ed found a stock photo online.

Ah - but your photos give a much better idea of what the thing is like. Twenty years ago, I'm pretty sure I had some version of that for my pristine 600X, which I gave up because it was too slow to be usable. I should have kept it and waited for the cheap-SSD era...

[kfzhu1229]

I had the Ultraslimbay version mentioned here, that's included on a ThinkPad 240 that was on loan to me.
Unfortunately that thing is not nearly as versatile as you might think... Not only will it not work with things like HDD or floppy, but it will also not work with a DVD drive! Like I tried modding a DVD-ROM/CDRW drive into Ultraslimbay (and worked on my ThinkPad 600) and plug it into this thing, and the DVD function does not work correctly even in Windows XP!
So in other words, if you want floppy, get the Ultraslimbay floppy external module. If you want just CD function, buy that PCMCIA one (AFAIK some can also use USB 1.1)
If an Ultrabay 2000 version exists, I doubt it will be any more versatile than the Ultraslimbay version that supports DVDs
There are several design barriers with these sorts of things. If you wanna use USB, then unfortunately certain high speed DVD drives at the time is simply too power hungry for the weak USB 5V rails back then to handle! (This is precisely why Dell's powered USB plug exists, on top of standard USB2 it provides strong 5V and 9V rails)
If you wanna use PCMCIA, then I imagine designing a drive that will work with all the varieties of Ultrabay 2000 devices is going to be very tricky

[cadillacmike68]

In all my years I never saw or heard of one of these...

What voltage do the 2.5 inch laptop drives require? They don't use 5V And 12V like the larger 3.5 & 5.25 in ones??

[rkawakami]

AFAIK, all standard 2.5" notebook hard drives require only 5VDC, never 12V.

[unixed]

You can definitely use HDDs and DVDs with the Portable Drive Bay 2000. It also takes batteries, which I seem to recall you have to use in conjunction with either (not both) the PCMCIA card or USB if you aren't using a dedicated AC adapter. I can't exactly remember where the batteries go, but there is a battery indicator light on the front. It takes DC 5V 2A input.

[kfzhu1229]

AFAIK, all standard 2.5" notebook hard drives require only 5VDC, never 12V.

yeah you are right about that. It seems like I was misleading people, but the reason why 9V is there on that one is that there's a power supply built in and converts it to a much stronger 5V rail. This is also why modern smartphone fast chargers also support 9V even though the main battery on your phones are all 5V.
While Ultrabay DVD modules don't have a current rating on it, the Dell one I have does and it's like 5V 2.8A to give you an idea. And older modules use even more power.
But yeah I do seem to recall that in the Ultraslimbay PCMCIA module I had it did take some AA batteries as auxiliary power as not even modern smartphone fast chargers can provide 2.8A on 5V.
Also I remember the limited power of those AA batteries might even affect the drive that it can't spin at the fastest speed (like how there's a BIOS setting to set for performance vs silent operation for the drive)
And also I know for a fact the Ultraslimbay one I had does not take battery modules (you can't expect 5-6V to charge a battery), just like the docks that accept Ultrabay 2000. If you plug the battery in, there's no room for the extruding part with the battery connector so it won't fully insert.
Back to the topic, do we even know if an Ultrabay 2000 one even exists at all?

[Edward Mendelson]

Back to the topic, do we even know if an Ultrabay 2000 one even exists at all?

Someone had one eleven years ago:

viewtopic.php?t=85171

[positive]

I have a Portable Drive Bay 2000, with cable and PCMCIA IDE PC Card and power supply. Do you still need one?

[Edward Mendelson]

Sending a PM...

[theterminator93]

Does anyone have the drivers floppy for the PCMCIA adapter? I bought one of these (just the regular version, not 2000) NOS a while back, but the floppy had deteriorated so much that I can't get the needed drivers off it...

[RealBlackStuff]

In the (T23) Drivers link (above) there is: DOS PCMCIA driver diskette [DSKEXE] and Readme

[pkiff]

Does anyone have the drivers floppy for the PCMCIA adapter? I bought one of these (just the regular version, not 2000) NOS a while back, but the floppy had deteriorated so much that I can't get the needed drivers off it...

I think then you're looking for drivers for the generic "Portable Drive Bay"? If the link from RealBlackStuff doesn't get what you want, I can send along the files that I have here on my hard drive. According to my notes, the files I have are v.5.00f (or b?) for Windows 2000 and v.4.00c for Windows 95/98 and 4.00f for Windows NT. The main file is just called "devbay.exe" (196 KB). The readme.txt is dated September 10, 2000.

I think I used to use this file to install the Win 2000 driver for use with Windows XP? - Maybe because Windows XP shipped with support for the "UltraBay 2000" version, but not for the original Portable Drive Bay version? Not sure if I'm remembering correctly.

Edit: the files I have are available in the forum's Drivers section:

• Readme:
  https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad- ... devbay.txt
• Main install file:
  https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad- ... devbay.exe
• Some other CD driver that I don't remember using, but which I also have in my files:
  https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad- ... vbaycd.exe

Phil.

[Edward Mendelson]

Does anyone have the drivers floppy for the PCMCIA adapter? I bought one of these (just the regular version, not 2000) NOS a while back, but the floppy had deteriorated so much that I can't get the needed drivers off it...

I think then you're looking for drivers for the generic "Portable Drive Bay"? If the link from RealBlackStuff doesn't get what you want, I can send along the files that I have here on my hard drive. According to my notes, the files I have are v.5.00f (or b?) for Windows 2000 and v.4.00c for Windows 95/98 and 4.00f for Windows NT. The main file is just called "devbay.exe" (196 KB). The readme.txt is dated September 10, 2000.

I think I used to use this file to install the Win 2000 driver for use with Windows XP? - Maybe because Windows XP shipped with support for the "UltraBay 2000" version, but not for the original Portable Drive Bay version? Not sure if I'm remembering correctly.

Phil.

Phil, if you would be willing to post those drivers here, I'd be grateful. I've got one of these drive bays in the mail from a helpful member of this forum. Thank you!

[pkiff]

Phil, if you would be willing to post those drivers here, I'd be grateful. I've got one of these drive bays in the mail from a helpful member of this forum. Thank you!

Updated my post above with links to files in the Forum's own driver collection - these are the same as the ones that I have on my drive.

Phil.

[farfromtheland]

I do have a floppy with the Win2000 pcmcia/IDE drivers for the Ultrabay 2000 portable drive bay, if anyone is still interested. This was sent from the US so I will check if there is any difference to the drivers here when I have some moments.

It still won't quite function with pcmcia in either win2000 or XP though. I only have the pcmcia cable. I recently bought another - new old stock - drive bay on ebay with usb cable but it didn't arrive, sadly. Meanwhile I am wondering if the main problem is dirty battery contacts in the drive caddy, because the battery power indicator is low to non-existent.

I have had the 2000 bay appearing in device manager as scsi, and with devbay2k.sys with drivers installed but still an exclamation mark.

[Edward Mendelson]

I do have a floppy with the Win2000 pcmcia/IDE drivers for the Ultrabay 2000 portable drive bay, if anyone is still interested. This was sent from the US so I will check if there is any difference to the drivers here when I have some moments.

Definitely interested! Thank you for offering this, even with the problems you mentioned.

[farfromtheland]

I can burn them on cd and send in the post if you pm me your address Edward - I have no spare floppies to write to at the moment!

[Edward Mendelson]

I can burn them on cd and send in the post if you pm me your address Edward - I have no spare floppies to write to at the moment!

Thank you! But there's no need to spend time and money on posting: Could you simply copy the drivers from the floppy and post them on the forum, perhaps in the Classic ThinkPad section? That would spare you the time and effort, and make the drivers available to other forum members who might want them later. And thank you again!

[farfromtheland]

Will do - soon as feasible. Best wishes!

[Edward Mendelson]

BTW, because photos of this unit seem to be hard to find, here's an eBay offering at an absurd price, which at least shows what it looks like:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115247653765?h ... SwdlFiB67A

[unixed]

The device takes a couple of batteries which supplements USB power to overcome the limitations mentioned here.

[theterminator93]

I too would like a copy of the drivers. I bought one of these years ago to use with my TransNote but the floppy was unreadable, so I couldn't boot from it.

Keeping my eyes peeled for a place to download them.

[farfromtheland]

I've got the floppy drivers ready to upload - just looking for the forum drivers section now.

Can't see how to upload them here, but I have spare floppies now and if anyone would like to pm me their address I can post them!

(Sorry for the delay - I also have some W2K pcmcia scsi drivers and card and was going to experiment to see if I could get the A31 to recognise both separately, then my new/old X31 conked and I had to try and deal with that.)

[Edward Mendelson]

Terrific, and there was no hurry I don't think there's a drivers forum, but you could create a new topic in the ThinkPad Classic Hardware forum with a title something like "UltraBay 2000 Portable Drive Bay drivers" - unless the admins have a better idea, which they probably do!

[theterminator93]

I've got the floppy drivers ready to upload - just looking for the forum drivers section now.

Can't see how to upload them here, but I have spare floppies now and if anyone would like to pm me their address I can post them!

(Sorry for the delay - I also have some W2K pcmcia scsi drivers and card and was going to experiment to see if I could get the A31 to recognise both separately, then my new/old X31 conked and I had to try and deal with that.)

My email provider will quarantine executable files with the antivirus scanner, but you should be able to upload it to Google Drive. Let me know if this works... https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

[farfromtheland]

Er, is there another way? I try hard not to deal with that corporation believe it or not. I used to upload to 'driverguide' before they went off whack. Let me know if you can recommend something, please, and I'll look around myself too.