Thinkpad 365ED: Floppy drives & other questions

[zolli]

Hi all,

I'm trying to track down a floppy drive and information on floppy drives in general for the Thinkpad 365ED. I recently purchased this model (doing a bit of retro DOS stuff) and it came with a CD-ROM drive, but no floppy.

I spent some time on a phone call with IBM support and after a lot of back and forth (they initially gave me a floppy part number for a USB drive -- the 365ED came out before USB!) I was told that the floppy options for this model are:

75H7572 - external floppy drive
41H7444 - internal floppy drive

Some questions:
* Does the external floppy need a special cable in addition to the drive? I've seen (and have one bought off of eBay that the seller thought would work for a 365ED) floppy drives where the drive itself has a connector.
* Are there any other floppy drives that work other than these two?
* Which connector on the back of the 365ED is the floppy connector? (There are two that look like they might work.)
* General question: Where can I find a manual for the 365ED. The best I could find was the hardware maintenance guide, but that doesn't give basic info like which connector is for the external floppy drive!
* Does anyone have a floppy drive for sale? (Is this a question for the marketplace?)

Thanks in advance!

[ilakast]

Welcome to the forum!

* Which connector on the back of the 365ED is the floppy connector? (There are two that look like they might work.)
* General question: Where can I find a manual for the 365ED. The best I could find was the hardware maintenance guide, but that doesn't give basic info like which connector is for the external floppy drive!

On page 82 (94 pdf page) of the hardware maintenance guide that you already have shows that number 8 is the floppy drive connector.

Also take a look at http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Floppy_Connector which only has info for the 365XD but probably relates to your model too.

[zolli]

On page 82 (94 pdf page) of the hardware maintenance guide that you already have shows that number 8 is the floppy drive connector.

Ahh. I missed that. That's helpful, thanks.

Also take a look at http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Floppy_Connector which only has info for the 365XD but probably relates to your model too.

I'm surprised how little information there is on lots of these machines. The wiki page is pretty uncertain about whether a 365 floppy is compatible with a 770:

(seems to be the same like i.e. 770, but a little bigger)

I suppose that's part of these laptops being very old technology. Figuring out this old tech feels a bit like archaeology at times I'll keep an eye out for a compatible floppy drive. In the meantime, perhaps I'll break down & purchase a parallel port floppy drive.

Thanks for the help.