the one thing i didn't like about all the mods i saw pics of was the way people were hacking away at the drive bay to get the current crop of 1.8" SSD's to fit, a good part of the machine's stiffness comes from the way the drive bay cage, system board and case bottom are all clamped together with screws. i knew there had to be an SSD out there were the PCB inside was much smaller than the standardized case and after some digging i found it: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2968/inte ... 125-ssds/3 while 30GB ain't a lot it's way more than enough for me, my XP and various program installs don't usually go over 1GB and the data/crap i store on the machine rarely gets to 10GB. i do remeber looking up pics of the 64GB version of the kingston SSD and it had a full size PCB inside. for those who do need more storage in this same form factor i have recently started seeing similar SSD's from sandisk that go up to 128GB. pretty sure they are made for OEM's but due to upgrades they should come up for sale here and there....at least on ebay i have seen a 64GB for sale.
now after i already had the kingston in hand and was just about ready to start hacking away i found this: http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... safe%3Doff so i guess i'm not the only one to visit anandtech and it's reassuring that someone else had success with the same disk. two things of interest in his short write up are that he doesn't mention the dreaded "2010 error" and he's feeding the SSD 3.3 volts while the label states 5 volts. tried to contact him regarding the voltage but no reply....so probing the little board i find that 5 volts goes straight to a switching regulator and nowhere else. not being able to find a data sheet for the regulator i just assumed it would be happy with no dropout like most switching regulators. to test it i rearranged the power connector on my desktop to feed it 3.3 volts and it worked just fine. this is great because instead of stealing 5 volts from somewhere on the system board i can just hook up to the old PATA connector.
another thing i don't like with all the mods i've seen is the way the disk is crammed in the bay with wires going everywhere, i wanted it to be easily unplugged just like the original disk. so i made up a little adapter with a SATA connector on one side and a PATA connector on the other. this would plug in just like the old drive to provide power and ground but also extend past the connector and be held down by the same screws that hold the drive cage and board to the base. here is the adapter board being test fitted before etching:
here's the board after etching and with SSD installed:
i figured i'd save some time and just draw out the artwork with a sharpie...big mistake, would have been much faster to do a toner transfer and it wouldn't have turned out so ugly either. my DIY HASL finish with a heatgun doesn't look so hot either...
and a comparison of the old drive to the kingston:

and the boot list in BIOS:

and i don't know why but i'm not getting the "2010 error" when booting the machine
