Issue with IDE mSATA adapters in R52 (1860)

[bammac]

Hi Everyone,

Got a little hooked on restoring some IBM ThinkPads T60 (8741) and R52 (1860), and went to town upgrading the systems with new batteries, CMOS batteries, RAM, HDDs etc.

The upgrades for T60 was pretty smooth, however the R52 has given me some grief... specifically the hard disk upgrade.

The original drive in the machine was clicking away so that was on its last legs, I ordered a Seagate replacement and thought it was on the "nice list" list to deal with the peculiarities of the this model accepting only certain "IBM approved" IDE Hard drives. Anyway I hit the infamous 2010 bios error and eventually stumbled onto the unofficial bios upgrade. After all that was sorted, I then had a working drive and was able to fully complete the the R&R recovery process back to factory fresh.

My next plan was to keep the working Seagate drive as a backup and do a clean install of the new drive via the IDE mSATA solution, here is where I ran into the issues:

1. I first order a cheap and cheerful IDE/mSATA case from Amazon and installed a Dogfish 256Gb mSATA drive into that.
2. I was able to format the drive to NTFS via Paragon for Mac and I could move files to an from the drive no problem.
3. The plastic case on the enclosure ran a bit high, so I removed that and was able to mount to adapter the caddy fine to ensure everything still lined up.
4. Once installed, I noticed the drive lights would not light up once the machine was switched on, nor was the machine detecting the drive. My thought was the adapter was not a match power wise, as its fine when connected to a 5v powered USB hub.
5. So back to Amazon where I then purchased a more robust/expensive ABLECOM adapter. This time I had a little more success, in that the machine would power the adapter and the drive was detectable. However it also caused an issue where the CD/DVD drive would take an age to load data or just eventually time out. It's like the drive was drawing TOO much power now.

It meant that when I try to run R&R with the mSATA adapter installed, it would copy over files from the boot disk and sort of fail/restart/try again, before it ever gets to the next disk. Installing a clean copy of Windows XP is the same outcome in that it starts to install but ultimately grinds to a halt.

If I put the newly minted Seagate HDD back in, everything goes back to normal. So I'm a little stuck as what to do to try and get this adapter to work. Or do I need to try another option? I know cloning the drive is one option, however it won't resolve the power issue either.

I know there is a SATA mod for the R52, however I can't make heads or tails over the instructions as some links have long died and others are in German.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[axur-delmeria]

IIRC the T43 is close enough to the R52. Maybe this T43 SATA mod guide can help:

http://mikejmoffitt.com/articles/0000-t43sata.html

[bammac]

IIRC the T43 is close enough to the R52. Maybe this T43 SATA mod guide can help:

http://mikejmoffitt.com/articles/0000-t43sata.html

It's probably outside my skillset... it also tapers off some of the details towards the end. There is no specifics on installing the SATA bridge to complete the install. I'm likely to make a mess of it, if I don't have the required detail to complete. Its still 50/50 even if I had the detail!

[RealBlackStuff]

Since you have the Intel R52, you need this picture:

After removing the Silicon chip, solder the B- and B+ wires to the matching (circled) resistors.

[solidpro]

On anything IBM-branded that isn't native SATA, i've given up on anything IDE->SATA because of countless hours wasted trying to get them to work.

I'd suggest a 2.5" IDE->CF adaptor and a fast IDE100 industrial CF card.

cheers